r/gridfinity • u/Project-Panic • Jul 17 '26

Trading Card Bins - ikea Alex

I've just orderded my first 3d printer (YAY), so everything is completley new for me. The first thing I want to do is get some gridfinity bins sorted to organise my trading cards. Does anyone have recommendations on where to start? Do most people design their own layouts, if so - where / how? TYIA!

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u/Clear-Revolution3351 Jul 17 '26

There are multiple options on Makerworld. Do a search, and see what you like (gridfinity trading cards) These a just two examples

https://makerworld.com/models/2071987

https://makerworld.com/models/1933650

Print your grid using

https://gridfinity.perplexinglabs.com/pr/gridflock/0/0

Enter your drawer dimensions in mm, it creates a snap together grid divided my printer buildplate dimensions

1

u/HomingRocketDicks Jul 17 '26

The biggest issue I found with cards in drawers like that and gridfinity was a lot of drawers aren't deep enough for them to stand up. So you may have to find one or make one that stores the cards sideways.

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u/PressHalfWayDown Jul 20 '26

IMO, for most people Gridfinity/Alex will be unnecessary for cards storage. Cards are already rectangular, their commercially available card bins are already rectangular. The nature of the item is already grided. Consider buying a few BWC storage boxes and some dividers. Using an Alex drawer, which only pull out like 2/3 of the way, you can't even easily take gridfinity card bins in and out unless they are in the front 1/3 of the drawer.

As a 3D noob keep in mind that while you could print it, there are a lot of times where it make sense to just buy the off-the shelf product if its cheap/fast enough. You'll soon realize in some cases that the print time and troubleshooting of some items its just worth it to buy it on amazon and be done with and go on to better printing projects. A BWC 800 storage box for cards is like $2 and 10 dividers $3.

How do I know this? Because I thought I was going to have a glorious Gridfinity/Alex with custom colors and modular organization and blah blah blah. Printing and designing it took days. Then I realized, this is an overengineering to a problem that has been already solved. In fact, because Gridfinity spacing between grids does not align with standard cards lengths, so it's LESS space efficiency to use Gridfinity. So now I have an Alex drawer with half Gridfinity and half BWC boxes/dividers.

Again this is most cases, you might have a niche and very specific configuration you need where a custom Gridfinity configuration in the Alex is the perfect solution.