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.
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).
> 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Thanks for posting these, the play conveyor ones are so clean and well designed , i've been watching them on youtube from time to time, havent decided to go with gridfinity or play conveyor yet tho
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 61.6 ms ] threadYou wouldn't download "Hello world"?
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).
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.
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.
Another improvement may be to make the top and bottom pieces stackable along with the snapping grid system compatibility.
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.
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.
Great in its own right though
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/
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.
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.
Between Honeycomb Storage Wall and Gridfinity almost every tool I own has a home.
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.
https://www.tooltrace.ai/
(and for the Europeans/Rest of the World, there's an A4 configuration option)
https://youtu.be/TvIvoY013xQ
I wish he’d write books.
Highly recommended: https://m.youtube.com/@ZackFreedman
You mean, always amazingly augmented, aspiring to alienate all other audible aspirations? Zach is always a treat.
Kudos to all gridfinity makers out there.
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.
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.
I guess they assume anyone hitting the site already knows this.
When I read 'grid' and 'storage' on HN, I think of other stuff.
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.
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 been able to print baseplates that fit precisely inside different drawers, add magnets, etc.
https://github.com/kennetek/gridfinity-rebuilt-openscad
https://youtu.be/fUyQEPzpkLk?si=cADJNQbbquJCUBKD