If you are worried about this you might want to consider whether you have a healthy degree of concern about hygiene and bacteria. It could be worth speaking with a therapist.
IIUC this is also true of most 3D-print materials. You should not be using Gridfinity to store food! This is also why you usually shouldn't 3D print a dildo.
This would be true even if the materials were food safe to be honest, I don't see how you can keep something like this clean.
It's for storing stuff like capacitors and screws and electrical tape.
context: 3D-print material like PLA is food safe, but due to the many edges and lines between the print layers it is basically impossible to clean to a food safe degree.
Because some of us have like 200 cables, and toilet paper rolls is a cheap but effective way of getting some control over these :) And besides, I'm sure that my fingers and feet are more dirty when I touch/move any of the cables, than the toilet paper rolls that spent a couple of days in a bathroom.
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:
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.
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.
Also the proprietary license on multiboard is absolutely insane. Not only is it closed source, even the printed objects have strings attached. If you ever use anything you print from the multiboard library in a for-profit setting you are obligated to pay a monthly license fee.
>Also the proprietary license on multiboard is absolutely insane.
Licensing in the 3D printing community tends to be a mess, with licenses that are often absurd, and selectively and sometimes dramatically enforced and unenforced. Multiboard is one of the most absurd I've seen, and is so utterly toxic I feel like touching anything involved with it would be risky: I'd really encourage people to read it [1] (and not the misleading summary they give). I suppose by even writing this I'm making myself ineligible for the license, as the license would not allow me to act in any way contrary to the interests of the company behind Multiboard, or even encourage any third part to act contrary to those interests. If the terms aren't absurd enough, there's a clause for the company to terminate the already limited ability to make and use derivative works if they feel you are taking advantage of the license terms.
Yet at the same time, go to any 3D printing model website, and you'll see numerous obvious copyright and trademark violations of Multiboard, often under completely incompatible licenses. Not only are these not removed (I have reported them before), but the owners of Multiboard will even officially comment on the sites praising the designs.
It's bizarre, but despite things at times going dramatically wrong, like with Benchy's license suddenly being enforced after many years of encouraging violations, people in the community largely seem to ignore the problem.
thanks for this one. I've just printed my first two stacks of Multiboard for the office after only reading the license summary.
The way they play with "Designed Works" and "commercial use" is really pretty weird. I kinda understand the aim - it's just one guy who's probably trying to make a startup out of this and is kinda hedging his bases against someone coming up with an injection moulded copy on Aliexpress. But the way "commercial use" is left vague is pretty sketchy. Is e.g. "background of an office in a youtube video" considered "commercial use"?
That being said, I guess I'll still finish at least one wall with it. I've used a few pegboards over the years and in my experience, these things don't die on licensing. They die on the fact that the manufacturer stops making them / switches to a different size / type. Here I can at least save the STLs and reprint the stuff as needed.
Trust me once you start printing this you are going to want it all over your home and want new panels on demand for any otherwise useless wall space. 3D printers are cheap!
They're also relatively big and ideally the thing they're standing on is attached to the wall or has a 40kg damper (i.e. a concrete pavement block or something similar).
I've got a bambu A1 and noise is not a problem at all, I had to put that concrete block underneath it or it'd destroy the cheap coffee table it was standing on due to vibrations :)
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.
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.
Time has never really been an issue imo. For the average person your printer sits unused 99% of the time if it takes you half a day to print a baseplate and some bins, who cares. It’s still faster and cheaper than shipping.
Commercializing doesn't really make sense. So I need to get a small 1x1x3 container to store washers or whatever. With my 3D printer, I'll have that container in under an hour. Even if I bought it with the fastest shipping Amazon has available, assuming it was from a local Warehouse, the earliest I could get it would be half a day away. Having a local store that sells them would be marginally faster, but then I have to go to the store, pick it up and come home. The hour I spend waiting for the printer isn't an hour. I'm I'm completely blocked from doing anything else. It's just an hour in which my printers busy.
The example you bring up is for a single one-off extension. Yeah, for that case it doesn't make a lot of sense.
However, for initial setup of the system (e.g. filling up multiple drawers with baseplates and basic bins, as you will see in many videos online), it would definitely jump start the process a lot, where you'll otherwise spend weeks printing everything. Additionally, if you also go for the fancier baseplates/bins that include the magnets you'll also spend quite a bit of time on assembly and will require external hardware anyways.
I personally didn't think it was a big deal as for me adopting the system incrementally over time worked quite well, but I think there definitely is a niche of people (and possibly businesses) that would like to adopt Gridfinity for its other benefits and appreciate faster initial setup time.
It's not clear what tort would be committed under US law by someone who sold injection-molded parts using the Gridfinity STLs. Patent infringement? No patent has issued. Copyright infringement? Copyright generally only covers expressive elements of works such as the sculpture in question, not functional elements like the "Sega" string that was at issue in Sega vs. Accolade. Trademark? Also doesn't protect functional elements.
Basically, it seems like the inventor purports to be licensing the kinds of exclusive rights to their invention that a patent would grant them, but without actually meeting the legal requirements for receiving a patent.
(I don't know of any other jurisdiction that would give them a cause of action either, but law is diverse enough, and many governments are corrupt enough, that I'm sure there's somewhere in the world they could win a lawsuit.)
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.
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.
There is also the option to do half bins / half grid pattern at the edge. So you have the normal 42x42 grid pattern, then on one edge there are 21x42 sized boxes. There are a number of designs that support the half grid pattern. This would reduce your maximum lost space down to 20mm, and you would still have compatibility with the gridfinity system.
I’ll have to give this a shot. I can always put the generic bins I can generate as half size on the edge and put the downloaded ones in the standard grid.
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.
Making the grid size smaller makes the wasted space less. In the worst case scenario, your draw is 1mm too short for the last row, so the other 40mm becomes wasted. If the grid was half the size for example, the worst case scenario is 20mm wasted.
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.
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.
Imho thats overoptimizing. To me the next larger square box is the best most flexible solution. I get the allure of perfect fit places for everything but to me its not worth the continuous effort. (I got several gridfinity drawers)
The common approach is to take a photo of an object from above together with a ruler or something of a known size for scale, then import that directly into the CAD software, scale according to the scaling object, and create a cutout along the object's outline. No need for calipers, 3d scans, or other complex measurement procedures. There are a lot of videos and guides on how to do that.
I'm sure your colleague has done this already, but for anyone considering creating their own models, I would highly recommend checking whether somebody else already went through that process for you. A lot of things have been fitted into gridfinity. And even if not for gridfinity specifically, you can fairly easily adapt other existing models to a gridfinity based box.
There are 3d model search engines where I recommend just entering [item name] + gridfinity to find pre existing models. There is: yeggi.com and thangs.com (be aware that the latter recently changed to only display models from its own domain by default).
Photogrammetry is one. Generally results in messy geometry though and tolerances get finicky.
The CAD plugin in Blender is my favorite though. Need a caliper to get measurements and then I can build out my hooks/clamps/whatever. FreeCAD for when I just need sketches as I find the solid part workflow utterly confusing, whereas I'm very well versed in Blender.
> Photogrammetry is one. Generally results in messy geometry though and tolerances get finicky.
The trick is a hybrid approach, use photogrammetry to get a draft model into whatever environment you use (like Blender or whatever), then use that for creating the high-quality cutout manually, which will be very easy with a in-place 3D draft model right in the scene.
Well if you want to get dirty and not deal with design, build a vacuum former. Shop vac, perf board, 2x4 or 1x2 frame and whatever rigid for a backer. Build the frames out of screen door frame pieces, and binder clips to close them. Polystyrene sheets are cheap af $.05 or less at any plastic supplier. Never been to a plastic supplier? I guarantee theres one relatively near by in whatever is your closest major city.
Use your oven to heat the plastic. Turn on the vac, pull out the plastic when it droops, slam down quick… perfect part. Lots of videos on youtube. Adam savage does a few on the process. Lots of nuance to the process to get really good pieces but for cheap, quick and good its hard to beat. Oh yeah the whole stormtrooper cosplay scene has done a lot of work on the setup, most definitely lots of improvements that I’m glossing over but like all rabbit holes its pretty deep.
I think maybe I've been on fark too long. https://m.fark.com/comments/6611712/Woman-discovers-boyfrien...
This would be true even if the materials were food safe to be honest, I don't see how you can keep something like this clean.
It's for storing stuff like capacitors and screws and electrical tape.
Because some of us have like 200 cables, and toilet paper rolls is a cheap but effective way of getting some control over these :) And besides, I'm sure that my fingers and feet are more dirty when I touch/move any of the cables, than the toilet paper rolls that spent a couple of days in a bathroom.
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 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.
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.
HSW 100%
Licensing in the 3D printing community tends to be a mess, with licenses that are often absurd, and selectively and sometimes dramatically enforced and unenforced. Multiboard is one of the most absurd I've seen, and is so utterly toxic I feel like touching anything involved with it would be risky: I'd really encourage people to read it [1] (and not the misleading summary they give). I suppose by even writing this I'm making myself ineligible for the license, as the license would not allow me to act in any way contrary to the interests of the company behind Multiboard, or even encourage any third part to act contrary to those interests. If the terms aren't absurd enough, there's a clause for the company to terminate the already limited ability to make and use derivative works if they feel you are taking advantage of the license terms.
Yet at the same time, go to any 3D printing model website, and you'll see numerous obvious copyright and trademark violations of Multiboard, often under completely incompatible licenses. Not only are these not removed (I have reported them before), but the owners of Multiboard will even officially comment on the sites praising the designs.
It's bizarre, but despite things at times going dramatically wrong, like with Benchy's license suddenly being enforced after many years of encouraging violations, people in the community largely seem to ignore the problem.
[1]: https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1C0-Iyxydqk_d2I3o_5ua...
The way they play with "Designed Works" and "commercial use" is really pretty weird. I kinda understand the aim - it's just one guy who's probably trying to make a startup out of this and is kinda hedging his bases against someone coming up with an injection moulded copy on Aliexpress. But the way "commercial use" is left vague is pretty sketchy. Is e.g. "background of an office in a youtube video" considered "commercial use"?
That being said, I guess I'll still finish at least one wall with it. I've used a few pegboards over the years and in my experience, these things don't die on licensing. They die on the fact that the manufacturer stops making them / switches to a different size / type. Here I can at least save the STLs and reprint the stuff as needed.
I had one in my office for years and no one could hear it on the other side of video calls.
You wouldn't download "Hello world"?
https://gridfinity.perplexinglabs.com/
Ironically printing custom pelican inserts with this right now
However, for initial setup of the system (e.g. filling up multiple drawers with baseplates and basic bins, as you will see in many videos online), it would definitely jump start the process a lot, where you'll otherwise spend weeks printing everything. Additionally, if you also go for the fancier baseplates/bins that include the magnets you'll also spend quite a bit of time on assembly and will require external hardware anyways.
I personally didn't think it was a big deal as for me adopting the system incrementally over time worked quite well, but I think there definitely is a niche of people (and possibly businesses) that would like to adopt Gridfinity for its other benefits and appreciate faster initial setup time.
Let people make some money while everyone is saving money.
https://x.com/zackfreedman/status/1650629770156326912#m
or for those allergic to X:
https://lightbrd.com/zackfreedman/status/1650629770156326912...
Basically, it seems like the inventor purports to be licensing the kinds of exclusive rights to their invention that a patent would grant them, but without actually meeting the legal requirements for receiving a patent.
(I don't know of any other jurisdiction that would give them a cause of action either, but law is diverse enough, and many governments are corrupt enough, that I'm sure there's somewhere in the world they could win a lawsuit.)
Maybe some actual lawyers could chime in on this.
> Let people make some money
Why would people who did nothing to invent and develop the system would get the money and not the creators ?
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.
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.
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.
https://www.tooltrace.ai/
(and for the Europeans/Rest of the World, there's an A4 configuration option)
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.
Also, there is an extension for freecad to make non rectangular (e.g. "p") shaped bins.
Most satisfying, least productive things I've done this year!
There are 3d model search engines where I recommend just entering [item name] + gridfinity to find pre existing models. There is: yeggi.com and thangs.com (be aware that the latter recently changed to only display models from its own domain by default).
The CAD plugin in Blender is my favorite though. Need a caliper to get measurements and then I can build out my hooks/clamps/whatever. FreeCAD for when I just need sketches as I find the solid part workflow utterly confusing, whereas I'm very well versed in Blender.
The trick is a hybrid approach, use photogrammetry to get a draft model into whatever environment you use (like Blender or whatever), then use that for creating the high-quality cutout manually, which will be very easy with a in-place 3D draft model right in the scene.
Between Honeycomb Storage Wall and Gridfinity almost every tool I own has a home.
1. Draw the outline of the tool in question on A4 paper
2. Scan it
3. Trace it on Blender, extrude, boolean
4. Print
Of course, only works for small enough tools. Maybe use more A4 sheets?
Adam Savage’s guide to vacuum forming https://youtube.com/watch?v=lTy8tsZzT_Q&pp=ygUaYWRhbSBzYXZhZ...
First page I could find for the diy stormtrooper costume process https://www.studiocreations.com/howto/stormtrooper/index.htm...
Though the plus side to this is that it can be done somewhat inrementally
Great in its own right though
Kudos to all gridfinity makers out there.