Of all the shelving solutions I have tried, Elfa from the Container Store is the easiest to set up, most versatile and expensive ( but worth it ). In creating 3D printed products like Kitty No and Tabby Tabs, we have an abundance of empty 3D printer filament spools. Liz had a clever idea to reuse some of those spools on the Elfa shelves to store some sewing suppliers for the MeowNuka Market Totes.

So I took some measurements on an existing Elfa hook, CADed it up, made the hook longer and came up with these 1 1/4 inch (31.5 mm) dowel hooks. The hooks have enough vertical offset to hold repurposed 3D filament spools that hang off of the Elfa ventilated shelves.

The original design did not have the endstops. After showing the prototype to Liz, she mentioned that it would be nice if there was something on the hook that would prevent the rod from sliding, yet be easy to take the spools on and off. When adding the endstops this created the need for a right and left style hook as the endstops needed to be on opposite ends of the curve to properly hold the rod in place.

The design files are freely available for you to download at: https://gitlab.com/meowfire_public/3d_prints/-/tree/main/Elfa_spool_holder

The Elfa hooks are printed using PETG, but you could use PLA. The endstop in the curved part of the hook are printed with them flat on the print bed. Supports are needed for the middle gap at the top of the hooks where the shelve wires fit. I used organic supports and a increased the number of minimum perimeters to prevent any infill.

As these worked so well for sewing suppliers, we have a bunch of Elfa in the garage and I am planning to reuse spools for wire, cable, rope and other stuff… I just not have figured out where to put them, yet.