HN Reader

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

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...

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.

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.

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.

Warning (or recommendation):

  Impossibly ambitious cleanup campaigns are like catnip to ADHD havers

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.

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.

When I read "grid storage system" I had something very different in mind. I kept thinking "where are the batteries?"

A cool solution using only cardboard and hot glue. Love this person's channel.

https://youtu.be/fUyQEPzpkLk?si=cADJNQbbquJCUBKD

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.

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.

https://github.com/kennetek/gridfinity-rebuilt-openscad

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.

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.

It's open source! Basically it's just the number 42 open sourced :). That makes it the MCP of things ha ha.

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/

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.

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?

Learn from my mistake: Not at all about the electrical grid and energy storage strategies.

Great in its own right though

Amazing, beautiful work!

Zach is awesome