I wrote a few months back that I bought a new “spinning wheel”, the Ashford eSpinner3. Along with that, I bought a WooLee Winder, which, like an old bait-casting fishing reel, winds the yarn back-and-forth for a lovely, evenly-wound bobbin of yarn.

I need more bobbins, though. The WooLee Winder came with three, which really is the bare minimum. More bobbins from the WooLee Winder folks, though, cost $49 each! I have a dozen bobbins for my Kromski wheels. That’s another 9 bobbins – over $400. Nope. Not me. I looked around and found a company on line that 3D prints bobbins. Alas, they do not make the model of bobbin I need.

Only one solution to this problem, it seems. I waited until Black Friday and bought a 3D printer. Peggy said I’d save money. I didn’t believe her, but she was right. I saved enough money ($60!) to buy three more kilograms of “PLA” (poly-lactic acid), the plastic that is used for printing. I now have orange, red, green and blue plastic filament, and I’ve been printing bobbin parts. 

  • 3D Printing four bobbin shafts
  • 3D printed spool

I am SO glad I was able to finally justify the purchase of this machine. I’ve wanted one for a long time. I’m also maintaining that I can “make money” with the printer going forward into retirement, and this morning at breakfast, one of my ham radio (yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m too involved) cohort asked if I would rent out time on it. I’m going to have to crunch some numbers. One of my spinner friends wants to know if I can print bobbins for her wheel – replacement for her are $59! Jeepers.

For those interested, I purchased a JGAurora A5S printer at Amazon. It has massive print volume for a printer in this price range (just under $500) – 305mm x 305mm x 320mm, which a shade over a foot in each direction. Some of the bobbin parts are big enough where I can only print two of them at a time.