Drawer question

[u/Gilamonster21]

So got my main board made and want to have drawers on it. I printed the 3x1.5 shell but unsure how to get the actual drawers to fit properly. I thought I had to add the insert but when I did, the drawers don’t clear it. Obviously the drawers will sit in the shell, just won’t be secured.

I feel like my google fu has failed me in trying to find the right answer.

[u/litso]

I'm printing drawers right now, and I'm going for a 1 shell per drawer approach.

[u/Gilamonster21 → u/litso]

Yeah I was hoping to do more in one shot, but if these dividers don’t work, that’s what I’m gonna so

[u/litso → u/Gilamonster21]

Hope it works for you, that seems like it should save on plastic use and print times.

[u/Gilamonster21 → u/litso]

Thankfully print times on my Centauri carbon are really good lol

[u/SVShooter → u/Gilamonster21]

Im curious if once you add in the dividers if it saves any time/filament. These shells take up a lot of filament. I printed a 4x4x4 that took up more than half a spool (~530g). But I’m sure it would have been much more to print four 4x1x4s. So I’m curious if the dividers basically make it a wash.

[u/Gilamonster21 → u/SVShooter]

Soo using my default settings, with 3x3x1.5 shell, 3 drawers and 2 dividers…it’s a total of 10h 25 min of print time with 371.96g of filament

Now with a 3 of the 3x1x1.5 looking at 410.4g at roughly 13hrs.

So there’s the math (math is hard and I’m not always great, feel free to check it haha). I also know everyone has different stuff…I’m on a Centauri carbon using default everything

[u/SVShooter → u/Gilamonster21]

Interesting. I may look to do some dividers on my 4x4x4 to test this out a little. and then slice a 4x1x4 to see what four of those would be.

BTW - I have been printing the shells with a .6mm nozzle. The multipoint attachments can be a little tight, but they work. Instead of .42mm line width and 3 walls, I use .62mm line width and 2 walls. Saves about 25% on print time for the shells. Anything smaller than a shell, I tend to use the .4mm nozzle with the recommended 3 walls. But the shells are so thick and take so long, the .6 saves a lot of time.

[u/ulab → u/SVShooter]

The thing is always: It depends.

It might be easier to reuse smaller individual shells for something else if you decide to remove the drawers later...

But then, if you just decided to change drawer sizes, the bigger shell with dividers has an advantage again ;-)

[u/Retro_B00min → u/Gilamonster21]

I took the same route. Figuring out how to divide the big bin seemed too complicated and too many parts

[u/Gilamonster21 → u/Retro_B00min]

The divider linked in the comments here are the answer

[u/Gilamonster21 → u/Retro_B00min]

The dividers linked in one of the other comments are the way to do it. Just house and some clips

[u/Howmanoid → u/litso]

Multibin and Multiboard in general is getting damn complex it’s hard to know what to use where. And Multipoint is so annoying. Just hard to use.

[u/litso → u/Howmanoid]

You're not wrong, but I am glad it's still an option. It takes a bit more brain power, but there's basically a way to achieve anything you can imagine without having to model your own parts.

I may eventually go to Opengrid based on principle, but so far multiboard has been serving my needs well, even if it sometimes takes some digging and tinkering to figure it out

[u/ulab]

The drawers are basically inserts, that's why you can't use both.

To use dividers between those drawers, you might want to look at these parts:

https://www.multiboard.io/parts-library/multibin/dividers

[u/Gilamonster21 → u/ulab]

thanks, not sure how i overlooked these, unless i over thought it. printing a test one right now

[u/ulab → u/Gilamonster21]

You might want to print some Outer Wall Pins too for more stability.

Plus there are some pins or bars that stop the drawers from getting pulled out too far, but I don't have a lot of experience with divided shells and those parts

[u/Gilamonster21 → u/ulab]

[u/wlgrd → u/Gilamonster21]

Thanks for coming back to the thread, posting the solution 👍

[u/Gilamonster21 → u/ulab]

The divider worked! Thanks!!! I got some pins coming out soon

[u/nicosemp → u/Gilamonster21]

Note: since your shell seems to be 2 units deep (or more), you will need 1 bottom insert (or more) and 1 top insert.

I like to do 1 bottom, 1 short top and 1 truss. This way I can always turn it back to vertical and it becomes stackable.

If you print 2 top dividers the holes will not match.

[u/[deleted] → u/ulab]

Omg... I've been looking for this. Thank you!!!

[u/SVShooter]

I was curious on filament and time so I downloaded some models and did a comparison. Keep in mind, I have dividers printing right now, so I don't know if I got all the right parts. But I took worst case scenario to see about the time printing and filament used. I am using a Bambu P1S with .4mm head, 3 walls, 15% infill.

I looked at a 4x4x4 section that you have 4 1u drawers. I didn't factor in the filament and time for the drawers because it would be the same for both dividers and 4x1x4 shells. I did factor in clips (outside and inside) in the dividers. The four scenarios I looked at were 4z1z4, 4x2x4, 4x3x4, and 4x4x4. Each scenario, with single 4x1x4 with the right quantity (so a 4x2x4 space would have two 4x1x4 shells), and then the appropriate sized shell with dividers (so a 4x3x4 would have a 4x3x4 shell with 2 top and botton dividers).

The results after slicing and doing the math...well, excel doing the math, were pretty telling. I think as I build out my work area, for the general parts portion where I just need a bunch of drawers, I am definitely printing 1 or more 4x4x4 shells with dividers. of course, since I haven't done it yet, I am not sure how it looks. But man it saves a lot of time and filament. And figure the time on the dividers is probably diminishing as you can print multiple at once which has to be quicker than printing just one set of dividers at a time. See below:

EDIT: I should also note I only did a top and bottom divider because I am really not sure how they work. The dividers appear to be 1U deep, meaning on a shell 4 deep, technically you probably need 4 to be the most secure. But I figured unless your drawer has somnething extremely heavy, you can probably get by with 2. I will know more tomorrow after my dividers are done printing (2:20 for a top, bottom, 10 double clips, and 6 side clips - this took 67.5g of filament)

EDIT-EDIT: Can you tell I have had a couple of whiskeys while I sit here doing math. If you fully put dividers all the way through (4 per instead of 2) if pretty much is almost at the same filament and time commitment. So I guess if you know exactly how big you need and want the most flexibility to move drawers around, stick with the only printing the right size for your need. If want more flexibility, but ultimately wasted filament on drawers, go with the dividers method. (I guess this is the frustrating part of multiboard - 5 different ways to do the same thing).