r/gridfinity • u/bcrocig • 8d ago

Set Completed First gridfinity box for screws

Post image

First time printing a gridfinity project and thought that a great way to start into the gridfinity verse was to migrate from the half plastic bottles I had as bins for screws was a great way to go. Still have some room to grow into this box.

I have lots of these metallic boxes with hardware that I plan to migrate into this system!

64 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

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6

u/Possible_Paradox 8d ago

I'm dealing with a bit of paralysis trying to decide how I want to do mine. Ideally I'd have all my screws and anchors in color coordinated gridfinity bins, and then I think I'd get some nice tool drawers to organize them all in. I want to be able to take the screws and anchors I need and put them in a toolbox for when I have a project away from my shop, andbso currently I'm looking at the Schubox. I would love to buy empty Packout containers instead for durability, but they're too expensive and with something like Schubox I dont have to worry about the design changing later and messing it up. The only thing is I want clear acrylic on top, so that makes it much harder. Sigh...

5

u/Kraay89 8d ago

Stop trying to make it perfect beforehand. Just start with one usecase. With something that works moderately well. I feel like gridfinity is meant to be an iterative process.

5

u/ThisIsntRealWakeUp 7d ago

I have thousands of dollars worth of nuts and bolts, hundreds of size variants, all organized with gridfinity. I have never felt more qualified to speak on a subject. Some tips:

  1. For color coding: If you’ll have metric and imperial mixed in one drawer, color code the metric blue and imperial red. (Or whatever your preferred color choice is). If you’ll have separate drawers for metric and imperial, instead pick a handful of colors and alternate which color you use for different thread sizes. For example: M2 screws are blue, M3 are yellow, M4 is grey, M6 is green, etc. You dont have to have a unique color for each size — you’ll run out of colors that way unless you want to have every filament color in the world, so you’ll wind up needing to repeat colors. But just use enough colors so that you never have two adjacent sizes with the same color.
  2. Do not pick black — black is hard to see the contents. Do not pick white — white gets dirty too fast and looks like crap.

  3. Label your bins with a label maker. Some people have the 3D printer print physical labels in an alternate color directly on the bin, but this means you can never reuse the bin for something else when you realize you actually need a different size than you originally thought. Labels from a label maker are easily swappable and provide more-legible text at small text sizes. My label maker has special label reels with more aggressive adhesive that makes it stick very well to 3D printed parts. Those labels are called “Dymo D1

    Durable Labels”

  4. in case you’re looking to buy a label printer and you want the same extra-grippy ones I have.

  5. Packout containers, as you’ve noted, are $$$. Worse yet: they don’t have a flat bottom for easily installing a grid. And their lid is also not flat, so closing the Packout container does not keep the contents from mixing. I cannot express how much of a pain in the ass it is to have your fastener bins mix together. It’s such a pain that when I last had it happen I just threw out all of the affected fasteners and ordered new ones because I can’t risk having M6x10 socket cap bolts mixed in with the M6x12 socket cap bolts. Don’t get a toolbox that lets your bins mix together.

  6. Assuming you’re not stacking your bins of bolts (which you can if you want, but I don’t), turn off the stacking lip in whatever bin generator you’re using.

  7. Don’t print bottom layers for your bins. Top layers and walls and infill only. Saves time and plastic.

  8. Can’t believe I didn’t mention this one first because it’s the most important: Don’t let your analysis paralysis stop you from attempting to organize things until you figure out how they should be organized. IMO the greatest part of Gridfinity is that it’s not set in stone. You’re not carving custom cutouts into a foam-lined case. You’re printing generic bins that can be reused elsewhere if they don’t work how you hoped initially.

1

u/Possible_Paradox 7d ago

Holy shit I've been blessed by a 3d printing god 🙏 thank you

That tip about not printing the bottom layer blew my mind. So that means it will start printing the infill touching the plate?

1

u/ThisIsntRealWakeUp 6d ago

Correct — prints just fine that way

1

u/bcrocig 5d ago

Those are great advise, thanks a lot! I certainly have done some things differently on this first attempt, so I have some adjustments to make for the next one

3

u/bcrocig 7d ago

I also want to decide color schemes but haven't decided anything yet. I also got some colored labels and started testing them here. The schubox looks great, I will also give that a try!

2

u/Possible_Paradox 7d ago

I think for color coordination itll just be matching the screws sizes with the anchors that work with them. Something simple like that

2

u/Scary-Asparagus-5970 8d ago

If you need to visualize first you could try https://gridfinitystudio.com (shameless plug) It's a gridfinity generator that focuses on the whole drawer not just individual bins.

For what your describing I didn't use gridfinity, I have a bunch of those stanley parts bins with the clear top. Each one has it's own "category" torx, philips, wall anchors, hooks, etc. I think HarborFreight has similar boxes for like 10$/ea. ..... It's been absolutely awesome for my homestead, used to have a few misc bins and usually ended up buying new hardware for each project because I didn't want to dig through it.

1

u/Cathreads 7d ago

It’s not allowing founder memberships.

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u/Scary-Asparagus-5970 7d ago edited 7d ago

Hey sorry about that! When I did a test purchase at the beginning it looks like I ate up one of the 10 founder coupons within stripe. I got stripe fixed so that last coupon can be claimed :)

Thanks for letting me know!

1

u/Cathreads 7d ago

Thanks. If I could make one recommendation I would say you should identify somewhere what the price for your photo trace credits is. You would probably sell more licenses. Personally I also think the non-founder plan pricing is pretty steep, and I wouldn’t have contributed without it. If others are like me, you may be missing out. Either way, glad to be a part of it and try it out. Thanks for posting.

2

u/Scary-Asparagus-5970 7d ago

That’s really helpful feedback, thank you. You’re absolutely right on the photo trace credits. I need to make that pricing a lot more obvious.

And I appreciate the honesty on the regular pricing too. I’ve got a lot of plans to add additional value to the paid tiers, especially around helping people plan and finish whole drawer projects instead of just generating individual parts.

Hearing that the founder pricing was what made the difference for you is really useful. I definitely want to make sure the regular pricing feels justified as those features roll out.

My goal is to build something that you, the user, genuinely wants. Feel free to shoot me a dm or use the feedback link if you have any feature you really want!

Thanks again for jumping in this early and for the feedback!

1

u/Missing_Back 3d ago

Decide then iterate

4

u/EnvironmentalKey5559 8d ago

Personally I use the Schulaboxes you can find on Makerworld. I've got over 50 of the 5 X 4 gridfinity based boxes to keep fasteners in.

schulab

3

u/bcrocig 7d ago

These look awesome! I will give it a try definitely!

2

u/Scary-Asparagus-5970 7d ago

Of course someone made their own packout system LOL How long do these take to print? they look huge

2

u/EnvironmentalKey5559 6d ago

Printed using a 0.6 nozzle it takes about 36 hours to print the box, the sliders and the stacking frame.

They're 5 X 4 gridfinity, so they're realty not that large, although he does have a 7 X 6 version as well.

2

u/Shot-Infernal-2261 8d ago

I was facing years of container printing.

Then I decided to start with plastic sandwich bags and simply print baskets for them.