Wire Spool Caddy

While working as an Artist in Residence at Instructables I noticed that they had a lot of loose spools of wire hanging around the office. You see, I'm one of those "everything in its place" types and frankly I have enough loose wire in my head, so I couldn't help myself but make this organizer. This wire spool caddy is made from laser cut acrylic plastic that was formed with a heat strip bending unit. To give the caddy a little zazz, the Instructable robot (I like to call him "Peaches") was engraved on the side and filled in with acrylic paint.

The project was cheap to make, simple to design, and helped me kill some time while waiting for a 3D print to finish. The only real trick to this was making the blue, cross-bar a bit longer (1/8"ish) than the space where it fits. I did this to make up for any extra space gained during bending, and to ensure that the white tray would squeeze the bar tight enough to hold it all together.

I found the vector version of Peaches on nagutron's Laser-cut Laptop Screen Protector project and, with a bit of tweaking, managed to get it etched into the side of the caddy. I painted the etching, let it dry, and then wiped away the excess paint with diluted rubbing alcohol, which is the same technique I use for inking my (nerd alert) GameScience dice. The design isn't quite a natural 20; if I had it to do over again I would have made it fit two rows of spools, but I'm still very happy with the execution.