Gridfinity: The modular, open-source grid storage system
gridfinity.xyz416 points by nateb2022 2 days ago
416 points by nateb2022 2 days ago
There’s a filament saving variant where you can use toilet rolls or other waste cardboard for the walls: https://www.printables.com/model/880256-cardboard-gridfinity...
Not gridfinity compatible, but I have a set of corner pieces that uses a similar concept. The majority of the material can be scrap acrylic, mdf, cardboard, etc. and you just print the corner pieces. Lids and stuff too.
https://www.printables.com/model/57813-boxkit-parts-for-maki...
3d printing is great, but a lot of wasted plastic if you print large organizers and stuff like that.
Wow this is amazing.
Why do people want to reuse toilet paper rolls? Paper is not a hygienic material, and these are used in a place that's rife with bacteria...
If you are worried about this you might want to consider whether you have a healthy degree of concern about hygiene and bacteria. It could be worth speaking with a therapist.
If the bacteria on toilet rolls was an actual problem, toothbrushes would be a much bigger issue than storage tubs.
Usually you don't use your toothbrush while fondling your genitals...
… do you.. use a toilet paper roll for that?
Modified wooden toilet roller? Wow. Just wow.
I think maybe I've been on fark too long. https://m.fark.com/comments/6611712/Woman-discovers-boyfrien...
I am not personally turned off by the hygiene of toilet paper rolls, but I think any rational adult's Overton Window should accommodate those who are. Your condescension is grossly unwarranted.
You don't have to be Adrian Monk to recognize that toilets are unsanitary.
I'm not sure where you got condescension from - I was going for genuine concern. Being irrationality concerned about hygiene is a warning sign for conditions like obsessive compulsive disorder.
Eh, it got a chuckle and eye roll outta me so I didn't mind.
And fwiw, I don't really care either wherever people use them for whatever they want, I am just still confused why people would want to use paper (sourced from leftover toilet utensils), which is notorious for being basically un-cleanable... as food storage, but to each their own.
I'm surprised how many people hate me for such (imo) mellow statement though
> notorious for being basically un-cleanable
I don't really think anyone other than OCD/germaphobes thinks about toilet paper rolls in that way and it's certainly not "notorious". I'm pretty sure the general sentiment is that it's a perfectly benign material, often given to kids to play and craft with.
The same thing happened with that episode of mythbusters about the toilet ploom from flushing. A bunch of OCD/germaphobes lost their minds and have not stopped thinking about it since. Meanwhile the rest of society gave a collective shrug and couldn't even be bothered to move their toothbrush brush to another room or close the toilet lid while flushing.
This isn't a food storage thing, but I think I see where you got that idea from the photos in the link. He's showing the types of paperboard that work with his system. Old cereal boxes, coffee filter boxes, etc.
I definitely wouldn’t want to he any kind of un-cleanable surface as long term food storage.
But I don’t think most people are using gridfinity as food storage.
IIUC this is also true of most 3D-print materials. You should not be using Gridfinity to store food! This is also why you usually shouldn't 3D print a dildo.
This would be true even if the materials were food safe to be honest, I don't see how you can keep something like this clean.
It's for storing stuff like capacitors and screws and electrical tape.
context: 3D-print material like PLA is food safe, but due to the many edges and lines between the print layers it is basically impossible to clean to a food safe degree.
You can make it reasonably food safe with an acetone mist bath, though. It melts all the irregularities into a smooth surface.
While theoretically you can get certified food-safe blend of PLA, the rest of the extrusion path must also be food-safe... I personally am not fond of eating hot degraded PTFE... Or the trace remains of charred ASA/ABS I printed last week through the same nozzle... Or in fact any of the various coatings of the heated bed or leftover trace amounts of previous prints...
It's just a black hole that I choose not to get into by not printing stuff that's expected to be in contact with food.
> I personally am not fond of eating hot degraded PTFE
If this is a problem, you should buy a new printer that actually keeps the filament conduits away from the hotend. This is a health hazard regardless of food safety - decomposed PTFE is nasty stuff to breathe in.
> Or the trace remains of charred ASA/ABS I printed last week through the same nozzle...
Fair enough, but I would also say that you should be purging old filament anyways before starting a new one. My slicer does this by default.
> Or in fact any of the various coatings of the heated bed or leftover trace amounts of previous prints...
These days, heated beds are covered in PEI. That's food-safe too.
I think your take is a little panicky and not supported by the evidence. It is perfectly fine to print single-use food stuff out of PLA, especially if you just have a roll or two of the pure (undyed) stuff around. You're much more likely to get sick from the food itself than the plastic it touched for a little while, and PLA is relatively biodegradable compared to most other plastic foodware.
> If this is a problem, you should buy a new printer that actually keeps the filament conduits away from the hotend
The filament is still in contact with the PTFE tube, the PTFE tube is also hand-cut by me and in motion with the head so it undergoes wear. Even when you get an all-metal hotend there are ways of contamination by PTFE passing through the hot-end and degrading into harmful chemicals.
> purging old filament anyways before starting a new one. My slicer does this by default.
I do purge and cold-pull. While this removes the bulk of the old filament it does not remove all trace amounts of it.
> These days, heated beds are covered in PEI. That's food-safe too.
It is food-safe only if it was produced in a food-safe manner and was kept food safe afterwards, including no contact with pollutants.
Since you mention evidence, I have no way of proving that anything I produce is food-safe. Literally not anything in my extrusion path is certified food-safe, let alone I have equipment to test.
The fact of the matter is that glass, ceramic, and stainless steel has replaced any vessels that are in contact with food at home, and I don't intend to look back on that, and I am in fact looking to replace anything in regular contact with human skin with non-synthetic/non-plastic alternatives -- this includes clothes, bed sheets and others.
While there is the hacking mindset, people also need to be responsible, and my red lines on that is making stuff with a safety aspect to it. Food safety is safety as much as fire and electrical safety in my book.
Also lead from brass nozzles. I think the risks are overblown, but recommending anything that is not recognized as food-safe for use with food is a liability, better safe than sorry, as they say.
There are food safe coatings though, these deal with the problem by making your 3D print not in contact with food.
The main solution I've heard is to just encapsulate the whole thing in foodsafe epoxy. Then it doesn't matter as much what the inner material in so long as you monitor for damage.
There's food safe epoxy? TIL
Yeah there are a couple that claim to be like this [0] one, and there are FDA standards to follow for that claim. I wouldn't use one on a cutting board or anything that gets scraped or cut on and you need to let it cure waaaay longer than normal but yeah there are options out there.
[0] https://www.artresin.com/blogs/artresin/food-safe-epoxy-a-gu...
But, importantly, you can 3D print a dildo mold.
The layer lines will show up in the silicone.
Im not sure how food safe it is yet, but there is PHA which promises more compostability into the soil.
https://reddit.com/r/3dprinting_pha is a start.
I think the hygiene issue is somewhat exaggerated. Early printing often didn't prioritize properly dried filament so the output often bubbled and had many pockmarks and imperfections where bacteria could grow. If you look at modern prints they are quite smooth and consistent.
Even so, if you want to be perfectly safe then apply a coat of polyurethane varnish and let it fully cure. That will seal any holes or voids where bacteria might grow, insulated from cleaning solutions.
> Why do people want to reuse toilet paper rolls?
Because some of us have like 200 cables, and toilet paper rolls is a cheap but effective way of getting some control over these :) And besides, I'm sure that my fingers and feet are more dirty when I touch/move any of the cables, than the toilet paper rolls that spent a couple of days in a bathroom.
You go through a roll in a couple days?
I'm not sure if you're trying to say that's a lot or little? But yeah, each roll might survive 3-4 days at most I'd guess, but honestly can't say I've ever measured. We're two people (me and my wife) in the household fwiw.
It las us (household of two also) at least a week. I've found out in the past that I used way too much out of habit. Also for some reason triple ply needs less paper
Feels like a lot. Even 3-4 days does. I'm not judging though!
In my household with 3 adults, we go through maybe a roll every 2 weeks or so. It's almost exclusively used for number 2 business though, so maybe that accounts for some of that difference.
Or, we just use very different types of paper, and yours require more of it for the same effect. :)
might i suggest purchasing a bidet. you can get one for less than $50 on amazon and it will help you dramatically cut down on toilet paper. it also makes you feel so much cleaner. my two cents
You mean like a phone, that you later stick up to your face? I’m sure someone will chime in with how they “never use their phone in the bathroom”, which no one will believe.
I worry about the digestive health of people who use phones in the bathroom. I go in there for a specific job, which I focus on until completion. I never get bored enough to start looking for other things to do.
That is a great improvement, but best would be a combination of both designs, the former adding the "finder shelf that can also serve for labeling, and the slopped bottom that allows scooping out individual pieces.
Another improvement may be to make the top and bottom pieces stackable along with the snapping grid system compatibility.
Zach Freedman, the creator of the original Gridfinity, is also an amazing writer and wordsmith. His videos are full of amazing tongue twisters, alliterations and incredible puns.
I wish he’d write books.
Highly recommended: https://m.youtube.com/@ZackFreedman
Creator yes, but is Gridfinity not based on this video from Alexandre Chapel? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHFK5sY8ToE
Yes, he explicitly calls it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ra_9zU-mnl8&t=384s
> full of amazing tongue twisters
You mean, always amazingly augmented, aspiring to alienate all other audible aspirations? Zach is always a treat.
Yeah his video was linked on the page and i found him incredibly entertaining. Agreed, he’s a very clever writer.
It took me a long time to convince myself he wasn't the actor from Numb3rs.
Open-source Honeycomb storage wall by RostaP: https://www.printables.com/model/152592-honeycomb-storage-wa...
https://www.reddit.com/r/honeycombwall/
Although they aren't open-source as Gridfinity or HSW:
Cargo modular storage system by Play Conveyor: https://thangs.com/designer/Play%20Conveyor/3d-model/Cargo%2...
Multiboard, by Multiboard: https://www.multiboard.io/
For anyone looking to get into those storage systems I can also highly recommend "Hands on Katie"'s Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@handsonkatie - There are a few videos that go into different storage systems and how to combine them to cover different storage needs and vertical/horizontal surfaces.
Her Discord is also quite active with people interested in the space, and Underware (under the desk cable management system), Neogrid and Deskware are all storage systems that have came out of her community.
I used the underwear+multiboard for my under desk organization and it’s excellent.
She’s quite a card
a card?
It's kinda like a wag, although the term isn't used as often nowadays
for the wall there is now also opengrid https://www.printables.com/model/1214361-opengrid-walldesk-m...
Why mention multiboard and not honeycomb storage wall (HSW)? It's open source and arguably a better ecosystem.
Also the proprietary license on multiboard is absolutely insane. Not only is it closed source, even the printed objects have strings attached. If you ever use anything you print from the multiboard library in a for-profit setting you are obligated to pay a monthly license fee.
HSW 100%
>Also the proprietary license on multiboard is absolutely insane.
Licensing in the 3D printing community tends to be a mess, with licenses that are often absurd, and selectively and sometimes dramatically enforced and unenforced. Multiboard is one of the most absurd I've seen, and is so utterly toxic I feel like touching anything involved with it would be risky: I'd really encourage people to read it [1] (and not the misleading summary they give). I suppose by even writing this I'm making myself ineligible for the license, as the license would not allow me to act in any way contrary to the interests of the company behind Multiboard, or even encourage any third part to act contrary to those interests. If the terms aren't absurd enough, there's a clause for the company to terminate the already limited ability to make and use derivative works if they feel you are taking advantage of the license terms.
Yet at the same time, go to any 3D printing model website, and you'll see numerous obvious copyright and trademark violations of Multiboard, often under completely incompatible licenses. Not only are these not removed (I have reported them before), but the owners of Multiboard will even officially comment on the sites praising the designs.
It's bizarre, but despite things at times going dramatically wrong, like with Benchy's license suddenly being enforced after many years of encouraging violations, people in the community largely seem to ignore the problem.
[1]: https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1C0-Iyxydqk_d2I3o_5ua...
thanks for this one. I've just printed my first two stacks of Multiboard for the office after only reading the license summary.
The way they play with "Designed Works" and "commercial use" is really pretty weird. I kinda understand the aim - it's just one guy who's probably trying to make a startup out of this and is kinda hedging his bases against someone coming up with an injection moulded copy on Aliexpress. But the way "commercial use" is left vague is pretty sketchy. Is e.g. "background of an office in a youtube video" considered "commercial use"?
That being said, I guess I'll still finish at least one wall with it. I've used a few pegboards over the years and in my experience, these things don't die on licensing. They die on the fact that the manufacturer stops making them / switches to a different size / type. Here I can at least save the STLs and reprint the stuff as needed.
> Here I can at least save the STLs and reprint the stuff as needed.
Until the license is revoked, changed, or you ever do some for profit work from the space where the multiboard exists. Multiboard legally owns the objects you printed on your printer with filament you paid for, so you will still be a pirate!
Multiboard is supposedly HSW compatible though so consider only printing HSW parts so you are not locked into their doomed ecosystem.
One might choose multiboard if they want better weight bearing characteristics. I went through this whole evaluation a few months ago and that’s how I ended up with Multiboard over the alternatives.
I think the license is a negative but I also don’t think it’s going to impact end users in any way that would make me worry about using it.
It’s not like I’m dedicating myself to a software ecosystem or something complex like that. If the license somehow becomes a problem, at the end of the day it’s just a pegboard that I printed for under $20 worth of material. I can just make a new one.
For walls there is also the GOEWS (Greatly Over Engineered Wall System) - https://goews.xyz
However personally, I've also been a fan of IKEA Skadis boards, as it's quite easy to get up and running in terms of a baseplate + there are already a lot of models for it out there.
Can recommend Honeycomb Storage Wall. Printed it two weeks ago, so far I am super happy with it. I've tried multiboard previously, but only a few segments. It was harder to print, I had it for a year and never really got into accessories, it felt too limiting.
OK, a hex grid wall is really appealing. Now I just need to find a local printer ..
Trust me once you start printing this you are going to want it all over your home and want new panels on demand for any otherwise useless wall space. 3D printers are cheap!
They're also relatively big and ideally the thing they're standing on is attached to the wall or has a 40kg damper (i.e. a concrete pavement block or something similar).
Getting one with an enclosure like a Prusa Core One does wonders for noise reduction. Can even throw it under a desk.
I had one in my office for years and no one could hear it on the other side of video calls.
I've got a bambu A1 and noise is not a problem at all, I had to put that concrete block underneath it or it'd destroy the cheap coffee table it was standing on due to vibrations :)
Consumer printers work well (or even better) without any dampers, and they come in all (e.g. fishbowl) sizes.
I don't need a damper for the printer, I need it for the furniture it stands on.
Re size, the bambu A1 with the AMS lite takes up quite a bit of space - but the option of not having to switch filaments and not having to worry about filament running out mid print is sooo nice.
Took me a while before i understood it was to store physical items. For a second I was thinking some battery solution-like grid storage system. A few photos on the homepage would help a lot and make it much more clear for noobs like me.
When I visit that page, the thumbnail of the embedded youtube video displays automatically and shows a gridfinity setup with a wide variety of tools in it. Presumably he's presuming that people can see that.
Same, hah. The similarity between gridwall and powerwall in another comment also snagged me. "Perfboard" has also gotten me before- both are perforated board, but one is used for quick circuit boards and the other (more commonly called pegboard) is a wall-mounted modular hook system for storage.
Resisted this for a long while, instead using a series of plastic organizers in various sizes, eventually settling on the Storehouse 10 Tray Organizer Utility Box from Harbor Freight which organizer size matches that used for selling a fair range of hardware on Amazon --- then, when I dropped one, breaking the dividers/separators in the box and went to look for a replacement discovered it was out of stock locally and was being discontinued.
On that basis, a DIY/roll-your-own solution became far more attractive.
- no waiting on shipping
- no worry about whether or no there is an SKU which meets my needs (I had to modify the 10-tray compartments into 5-tray front--back organizers for endmills)
The thing which finally pushed me over was the development of a matching Systainer system:
https://old.reddit.com/r/gridfinity/comments/1lnkt93/wip_upd...
which hopefully will be ready by the time my order of a new/larger 3D printer than my current (tiny) Ordbot Quantum arrives.
This. Every commercial system I've used changes or is discontinued. I now take my storage into my own hands, even if it takes longer.
I standardized on Sortimo t-boxx for our workshops:
https://www.mysortimo.us/en_US/Storage-Bins-%26-Boxes/T-BOXX...
... and although the insert colors changed, the architecture and sizing has been constant for more than 15 years ...
I like T-Boxx, but they get very expensive (+€60, without accessories), and as I'm not using them commercially, it doesn't make sense for me.
Meanwhile, among others, I've placed alerts for their L-Boxx Mini, so I buy a couple of them each time they go €8 or less. (Less than 8 is unusual, but around 8 is possible)
This is for generating custom bin / baseplate sizes in multiple "formats", and solves a lot of the issues I see brought up on this thread.
https://gridfinity.perplexinglabs.com/
Outside of gridfinity it can be used to generate odd-sized grids via the GRIPS option, make HSW honeycomb walls, and supports multiboard, and a few others.
I’ve been trying this out. The biggest problem I’m experiencing is that your draws won’t be a perfect multiple of the grid size. Which means you are always going to be left with gaps on the side which are wasted space which could be up to 40mm.
There is kind of a solution to this where you can use non standard grid sizes to perfectly fit your draws, and there are generators which will create the baseplates and bins for you. But you lose the ability to use other people’s models.
Feel like it would have been better if they had picked a smaller grid size so the average wasted space would be smaller.
There is also the option to do half bins / half grid pattern at the edge. So you have the normal 42x42 grid pattern, then on one edge there are 21x42 sized boxes. There are a number of designs that support the half grid pattern. This would reduce your maximum lost space down to 20mm, and you would still have compatibility with the gridfinity system.
I’ll have to give this a shot. I can always put the generic bins I can generate as half size on the edge and put the downloaded ones in the standard grid.
Or print a custom spacer to fill any gaps you have on the edges that also has holes or slots to hold even more random crap.
There is a fusion 360 plugin where you can customize all this. You won't be able to download everything out there for the default grid size, but you can make your own.
I am actually beginning work on a fork which uses 21mm (half normal size) as the basis grid) --- a lot of my work (and attendant hardware) is smaller scale, so hoping that will work out well.
What I do is print custom bins to store long things on the side of the grid. Making it smaller or bigger would not have fixed anything.
Making the grid size smaller makes the wasted space less. In the worst case scenario, your draw is 1mm too short for the last row, so the other 40mm becomes wasted. If the grid was half the size for example, the worst case scenario is 20mm wasted.
Maybe I'm a bit of a downer there, but I looked at the overall effort and time investment of making Gridfinity and rather got myself a cutting board and glue to recycle old cardboard.
Don't get me wrong, Gridfinity looks amazing. But, cutting a few cardboard base plates from old shipping boxes into place and putting together little stands for a metronome, tuner and a few other small things, as well as a bunch of boxes for plecs and other small stuff took like half an hour to an hour.
And I could reuse some trash shipping boxes I had around here.
Along these lines, foam core board is a super common and effective material for making drawer organizers and little boxes. It's very cheap and holds together surprisingly well with hot glue or super glue. Adam Savage is a huge fan of it and he's tried everything.
Adam Savage has done everything, but he's still a little bit behind on practical 3D printing. I think as of 2~ years ago he said he still wasn't 'up' on his CAD programs.
He did get a new Nylon FDM machine and a few other things, but he isn't so much a software design person. Mr. Savage has a huge bias towards using their hands to solve their problems and I wouldn't take his work style as a referendum on the utility of these other tools.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWXcnVTY3pk
Foam Core is still cool tho
I needed to organize a bunch of tools and other miscellaneous items in a closet. I tried printing a few Gridfinity items, but quickly realized that it wasn't worth the time, effort and filament + electricity costs. I ended up going to the dollar store and buying a bunch of plastic containers and some labels, and managed to get everything organized in an hour and for under $10.
I think Gridfinity is more geared toward people looking for a hobby than a practical storage solution. Which it totally fine - people are definitely creating some cool stuff with Gridfinity - but probably good to decide up front which group you fall into.
You'd be surprised how many ways there are to make storage containers. Gridfinity is one of them.
When I read "grid storage system" I had something very different in mind. I kept thinking "where are the batteries?"
And I went straight to storing large numerical arrays, i.e. replacement for Zarr, NetCDF, HDF, etc
It’s such a nice project. But boy do I think it would benefit from mass production. People spend a lot of time printing generic bins and baseplates that would be better spent just printing custom bins.
Time has never really been an issue imo. For the average person your printer sits unused 99% of the time if it takes you half a day to print a baseplate and some bins, who cares. It’s still faster and cheaper than shipping.
> People spend a lot of time printing generic bins and baseplates that would be better spent just printing custom bins
3D printing with a modern printer is set and forget. You send the print file to the printer and you go get it a couple hours later.
Still faster than waiting for a package from Amazon and lower resource usage than driving to the store.
The customization comes everywhere from picking the bin you want to selecting the color filament to match your layout. Gridfinity isn’t my thing but people who are into it are usually customizing something, from the color to the baseplate.
Commercializing doesn't really make sense. So I need to get a small 1x1x3 container to store washers or whatever. With my 3D printer, I'll have that container in under an hour. Even if I bought it with the fastest shipping Amazon has available, assuming it was from a local Warehouse, the earliest I could get it would be half a day away. Having a local store that sells them would be marginally faster, but then I have to go to the store, pick it up and come home. The hour I spend waiting for the printer isn't an hour. I'm I'm completely blocked from doing anything else. It's just an hour in which my printers busy.
The example you bring up is for a single one-off extension. Yeah, for that case it doesn't make a lot of sense.
However, for initial setup of the system (e.g. filling up multiple drawers with baseplates and basic bins, as you will see in many videos online), it would definitely jump start the process a lot, where you'll otherwise spend weeks printing everything. Additionally, if you also go for the fancier baseplates/bins that include the magnets you'll also spend quite a bit of time on assembly and will require external hardware anyways.
I personally didn't think it was a big deal as for me adopting the system incrementally over time worked quite well, but I think there definitely is a niche of people (and possibly businesses) that would like to adopt Gridfinity for its other benefits and appreciate faster initial setup time.
I think they're a good intro to 3D printing.
You wouldn't download "Hello world"?
You can use this custom gridfinity generator.
https://gridfinity.perplexinglabs.com/
Ironically printing custom pelican inserts with this right now
The Slant3d guys have a trope about 3d printing primarily being a fulfilment technology, not a manufacturing one. To me it doesn't matter if someone is selling an injection moulded baseplate if I can print one for pennies from filament I already have and it's in my hands in a couple of hours with no delivery charges.
I don't understand the sibling posts that're arguing with you.
Consumer-grade containers would be cheaper than 3d printing if buying a set, it'd get folk up-and-running without fuss, and when they wanted to customize it they could do so with the help of any of their 3d printing fanatic buddies.
So yeah. I agree with @stephenpetryk. Storage solution companies should start marking their bins as Gridfinity-compatible (which is a protected use of copyright regardless of whether "Gridfinity" is copyrighted).
The place to start would be enough basic bins and the grid itself for the Alex drawers from Ikea.
The cool things about gridfinity is not just the custom pieces, but also the exact fit that can be achieved. Since every drawer seems to be a slightly different size, exact fits with basic bins would never quite be achieved without targeting a specific drawer.
Also, I've turned down the fill and structural strength a lot without issues for most things. How strong does a bin for cotton swabs need to be?
Especially for baseplates, since I have some drawers that are larger than my print area. It'd be awesome to just buy an injection molded 8x7 on Amazon or whatever for $5 instead of fiddling with glue and interlocking puzzle pieces.
I guess selling injection molded parts is forbidden under its licensing terms, which seems unfortunate.
Let people make some money while everyone is saving money.
It's been MIT licensed for a couple of years now:
https://x.com/zackfreedman/status/1650629770156326912#m
or for those allergic to X:
https://lightbrd.com/zackfreedman/status/1650629770156326912...
It's not clear what tort would be committed under US law by someone who sold injection-molded parts using the Gridfinity STLs. Patent infringement? No patent has issued. Copyright infringement? Copyright generally only covers expressive elements of works such as the sculpture in question, not functional elements like the "Sega" string that was at issue in Sega vs. Accolade. Trademark? Also doesn't protect functional elements.
Basically, it seems like the inventor purports to be licensing the kinds of exclusive rights to their invention that a patent would grant them, but without actually meeting the legal requirements for receiving a patent.
(I don't know of any other jurisdiction that would give them a cause of action either, but law is diverse enough, and many governments are corrupt enough, that I'm sure there's somewhere in the world they could win a lawsuit.)
Maybe some actual lawyers could chime in on this.
I don't know if it's the case of gridfinity but
> Let people make some money
Why would people who did nothing to invent and develop the system would get the money and not the creators ?
Generic drug manufacturers did nothing to invent tylenol but they sure make a ton of money making billions of pills each year.
A cool solution using only cardboard and hot glue. Love this person's channel.
I've always viewed these projects with a bit of suspicion - like I have trouble believing that anyone who does this actually does more with their tools than organize them and put them away. Which is fine if that's what you like, but not why I personally own tools. Shop time is limited enough as it is.
Also seems like a great way to add +50% plastic volume to everything you own. Incidentally, I've found the cardboard boxes that 3D printer filament comes in to be an excellent basis for general storage.
I've printed a ton of little compartments for all manner of things for crafts. I'll print the grid to lay flat in a drawer, and then print various size boxes which socket into that grid. I'll also print a grid to lay on the table, so there is never a need to pull parts from the drawers, just pull the whole box and it sockets onto the table with it's own dedicated space and no slippage.
There is also a plugin for Fusion 360 which allows customizing a lot of items that can go into the grid.
I do work on my shop, but only so far as it furthers my hobbies.
As far as gridfinity goes, it's really nice to have the right size and amount of storage for everything. Imagine those inserts people buy for cutlery for a drawer in the kitchen. There is always a gap on the side for something to fall into. There is only a slot for all knives. No place at all for corn on the cob holders.
Now imagine this same problem for building models where a person may have 200+ different items in different amounts. Previously people used things like tackle boxes from fishing, or one of those plastic cases for holding screws. But they never quite line up.
Also, 3d printing is very much an asynchronous kind of thing. You work on your shop by pushing a button and get results an hour later. It's not woodworking where you spend 80 hours building your bench, then the next 500 hours building all the parts for it.
YMMV but when my work area changed from "big pile of junk" to "semi-organized", it removed a lot of the friction I had for just starting projects. I need a tape measure? I know exactly where one is, it has a dedicated 3D printed holder on my pegboard which lets me get to work instead of spending 15 minutes digging through drawers and shelves.
Yes? My tape measures are in the tape measure box. White metal cabinet, lowest shelf on the right, cardboard box marked "tape measures." There's a dozen or so tape measures in there. Same place they've been the last 30 years.
Making a custom enclosure for every tool seems over optimized and wasteful. If I were to attempt this, it would take decades and I'd never see a return on productivity within my lifetime.
I’m not sure if having a box in a drawer in the cabinet with 10 tape measures is the flex you think it is
Point taken, but still not one I feel is worth spending a few filiment rolls on
Everything has a place, and when it’s in its place, I can find it quickly and get to work. These systems help me with that.
to each their own. if you do 1 small project per year, it might make sense to dig for 30 minutes in home depot bucket to find out you don't actually have the part you thought you have. doing that more frequently starts to become major waste of time. my tools don't live in gridfinity boxes, shallow tool drawers are good enough, but metric bolts, nuts and other stuff is neatly organised.
An old colleague of mine went through the process of doing gridfinity. One of his main struggles was getting boxes that fit his power tools perfectly. He was looking for a way to easily get a shape of the tool into CAD. What’s the most straightforward and effective way to get a CAD representation of a solid these days? Of course there are expensive solutions but is there anything reasonably achievable in the DIY space?
If you just need an outline, this nascent AI site tries to address that need:
(and for the Europeans/Rest of the World, there's an A4 configuration option)
Imho thats overoptimizing. To me the next larger square box is the best most flexible solution. I get the allure of perfect fit places for everything but to me its not worth the continuous effort. (I got several gridfinity drawers)
The common approach is to take a photo of an object from above together with a ruler or something of a known size for scale, then import that directly into the CAD software, scale according to the scaling object, and create a cutout along the object's outline. No need for calipers, 3d scans, or other complex measurement procedures. There are a lot of videos and guides on how to do that.
This is how to do it.I also round the edges of the cutout.
Also, there is an extension for freecad to make non rectangular (e.g. "p") shaped bins.
Most satisfying, least productive things I've done this year!
You could get a table mat with a measuring grid and take photographs of the object from different sides; three or more depending on how much asymmetric features the object has. Go as far away from the object as possible and use maximum zoom to get as close to isometric perspective as possible. If it’s not a very thick object, this method is millimeter accurate. With larger objects, the perspective will lead to slightly larger measurements at the object extremities: edges closest to the camera will be enlarged.
Then, in your CAD program, set up the photos as backgrounds for different perspective views.
Or, obviously, get a 3D scanner and live with the point cloud mesh approximations, it’s probably less of a hassle.
Or… just get a good set of calipers and a radius measuring tool.
I'm sure your colleague has done this already, but for anyone considering creating their own models, I would highly recommend checking whether somebody else already went through that process for you. A lot of things have been fitted into gridfinity. And even if not for gridfinity specifically, you can fairly easily adapt other existing models to a gridfinity based box.
There are 3d model search engines where I recommend just entering [item name] + gridfinity to find pre existing models. There is: yeggi.com and thangs.com (be aware that the latter recently changed to only display models from its own domain by default).
I just pull out calipers, take some quick measurements, then put them into OpenSCAD, export, and hit print.
Between Honeycomb Storage Wall and Gridfinity almost every tool I own has a home.
While it wasn't 3D printed, that is how I did things when I first got my first CNC machine:
Photogrammetry is one. Generally results in messy geometry though and tolerances get finicky.
The CAD plugin in Blender is my favorite though. Need a caliper to get measurements and then I can build out my hooks/clamps/whatever. FreeCAD for when I just need sketches as I find the solid part workflow utterly confusing, whereas I'm very well versed in Blender.
I use Photopea. If you can get a decent silhouette you can do Image > Vectorize Bitmap to get a path and save it as an .SVG
Blender can import an SVG; then you can clean up the curve if necessary.
> Photogrammetry is one. Generally results in messy geometry though and tolerances get finicky.
The trick is a hybrid approach, use photogrammetry to get a draft model into whatever environment you use (like Blender or whatever), then use that for creating the high-quality cutout manually, which will be very easy with a in-place 3D draft model right in the scene.
I do the following:
1. Draw the outline of the tool in question on A4 paper
2. Scan it
3. Trace it on Blender, extrude, boolean
4. Print
Of course, only works for small enough tools. Maybe use more A4 sheets?
Well if you want to get dirty and not deal with design, build a vacuum former. Shop vac, perf board, 2x4 or 1x2 frame and whatever rigid for a backer. Build the frames out of screen door frame pieces, and binder clips to close them. Polystyrene sheets are cheap af $.05 or less at any plastic supplier. Never been to a plastic supplier? I guarantee theres one relatively near by in whatever is your closest major city. Use your oven to heat the plastic. Turn on the vac, pull out the plastic when it droops, slam down quick… perfect part. Lots of videos on youtube. Adam savage does a few on the process. Lots of nuance to the process to get really good pieces but for cheap, quick and good its hard to beat. Oh yeah the whole stormtrooper cosplay scene has done a lot of work on the setup, most definitely lots of improvements that I’m glossing over but like all rabbit holes its pretty deep.
Adam Savage’s guide to vacuum forming https://youtube.com/watch?v=lTy8tsZzT_Q&pp=ygUaYWRhbSBzYXZhZ...
First page I could find for the diy stormtrooper costume process https://www.studiocreations.com/howto/stormtrooper/index.htm...
Using the OpenSCAD build to customize them is great!
I've been able to print baseplates that fit precisely inside different drawers, add magnets, etc.
Had to watch the first 60 seconds of a linked video to know what this even was. It's printable tool storage, tools as in screwdrivers etc.
I guess they assume anyone hitting the site already knows this.
When I read 'grid' and 'storage' on HN, I think of other stuff.
Warning (or recommendation):
Impossibly ambitious cleanup campaigns are like catnip to ADHD haverssighs in stalled project and half organised gridfinity cupboard
Though the plus side to this is that it can be done somewhat inrementally
I must have a very indifferent attitude towards catnip then.
I've also sought treatment for OCD. It doesn't give me any kind of "organizing superpower", it just makes we want to wash my hands after touching things.
Learn from my mistake: Not at all about the electrical grid and energy storage strategies.
Great in its own right though
It's open source! Basically it's just the number 42 open sourced :). That makes it the MCP of things ha ha.
Zach is awesome
Amazing, beautiful work!
It is by no means a perfect solution, but its simplicity and its mass adoption make it by far the best one out there.
Kudos to all gridfinity makers out there.
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