chances are pretty good that most of us won’t ever need to move filament from one spool to another. But even so, you’ve got to respect this purely mechanical filament respooler design ...

Our objective was to design and fabricate a high-speed manufacturing device that reforms the tubing through heat and mechanical manipulation before entering automation.

By using high-force, continuous-action solenoids, minimum-friction mechanical moving parts ... A key feature in the valve is a spool and sleeve assembly with no overlap in midposition.

For measurements the silk was transferred carefully with dividers from the spool to a custom-built microscale mechanical testing machine 5,7. A single thread was mounted to the hooks of the ...