Fly Fishing Reel

What started out as a neat gift idea for my dad, who is an avid fly fisher, became a great opportunity to practice some of what I learned about mechanics, product design, DFM. I started fly fishing with my dad when I was maybe 5 or 6 years old, and since then it's been a familiar skill that I recall once in a blue moon. I took inspiration from older Orvis reels, which have such a sleek but simple design with a ratchet and pawl system that is exposed when you remove the spool. Taking some of the basic principles from the design, I considered the material properties I would need for a 3D printed ratchet system and got modeling.

After a couple iterations, I settled on a design that uses two pawls to create equal tension whether the user is left or right handed. The spool comes off just as any other fly fishing reel, but uses neodymium magnets instead of a mechanical clasp. The spool rotates around a shouldered bolt with a cylindrical neodymium magnet, providing a smooth yet extremely strong foundation along the axis of rotation.

The internal components should be printed in a stiff plastic with some flexibility to allow proper motion. If not aligned, the magnets can cause the ratchet and pawls to interfere with a sudden impact, so if the material of the pawls is brittle, they will form stress cracks. The material surface mustn't be too abrasive, as the ratchet or pawls will be worn beyond use in a fishing reel's magnitude of cycles.

I wanted this reel to be robust and survive virtually any impact caused by a fisherman, so I picked PA6-CF20, but after a short amount of research I found that carbon and glass fibers can break off into microscopic shards. Since I did not want to introduce harmful microscopic waste in our streams, I've let the project hang on the shelf, most likely until it gets warm. Then, I will probably print the reels out of a filament with strengthening fibers that are biodegradable.