One of the 3D printed systems I was keen to experiment with was Gridfinity. It was designed by Zack Freedman and released under a MIT licence, to encourage sharing and further development. The underlying idea is very simple. You print a number of grid pieces and then storage units can be slotted into them. The key to the system is that each square of the grid measures 42x42mm and each unit grows upwards in multiples of 7mm. Combined with a little bit of consistent shaping, that means the system is entirely modular, allowing it to grow outwards and to stack upwards.

One use case for the system is making messy drawers more organised. Earlier this month I printed a series of grid pieces for one of the drawers in our kitchen / dining room area and I also designed a tape roll holder to organise all the rolls of insulation tape and similar items that were part of the clutter.

Today I have been putting my printer to work to run off a series of models by other people which follow the Gridfinity specifications and hold various sizes of battery. As well as getting my collection of spare batteries in order, it also helps tie the underlying grid system together. On my small printer, I have a maximum print area of 185x185mm so I the largest grid I could print is a 4×4 one. That is less than the 7×10 grid I would need to cover the drawer but I covered it with 4×2 and 3×2 blocks and, as I print more storage units, it gradually gets held together.

Not everything has an existing model so this evening’s project is working out a design in OpenSCAD that will let me hold a small Really Useful Storage Box in a Gridfinity mount. I’m presently at the stage of printing off a second thin mask for the base (under 2g of filament) as I refine the measurements. Once I get that dialled in, I will be able to combine it with a model for the underlying base and the box, which I’ve been using for a few years to hold spent batteries for recycling, can also be integrated with the underlying grid.