I bought one of those fancy many thread holding units to sit behind my embroidery machine. It will hold about 20 spools of thread or cones. That thing is now in the closet all nicely put away for some other "sucker" to use. I had that same thing happen to me with my Designer Diamond. There was about a half of a large spool of thread wrapped around the shaft. Luckily I got it all out without anything breaking. But never again will I put a cone holder back behind the machine.