Mad about Science: Gridfinity

By Brenden Bobby
Reader Columnist

As a tinker-minded individual with ADHD, I can attest to the fact that organization is hard. I marvel at folks with immaculate workshops in which every bit, tool and piece of scrap has its own perfect place. My own art station — and especially my workshop — are cluttered messes with repurposed storage containers procured from bargain bins and odd jobs throughout my life. My supplies roll and rattle around while other, larger objects just end up being strewn out since they won’t fit into an inherited bin.

Anyone who has ever had their own workshop knows that even once they get everything exactly how they want it, a new toy purchase will completely upend the equilibrium of the space. Adam Savage, of Mythbusters fame, views workshops as living and evolving organisms that adapt to the people who use them, therefore there is no “perfect standard” by which to design one’s workspace, just a ceaseless pursuit of unobtainable perfection.

Until recently, we have all been at the mercy of large-scale manufacturing to create injection-molded bins at premium costs, specialized housings that need to be fabricated and shipped in, or ill-fitting tool sets that never go into the right drawer and end up scattered all over the garage thanks to the mischievous paws of a cat that loves the sound of clattering metal and rage-filled human cries.

3-D printing has completely revolutionized all of that and given workshop and home organizers a solution that is fully customizable for their space without requiring an iota of knowledge in 3-D design — at least to a certain extent. We’ll cover that later.

Gridfinity was developed as a customizable solution to workshop organization that has evolved into a whole-house solution for everyone. The basis of the system is that you 3-D print grids of a preset size that act as a baseplate for interlocking bins you also 3-D print. There is no concern about the bins not aligning or linking up with grids even if your space changes, because the interlocking pieces are always the same size.

One common concern is if you have a toolbox that was measured out in imperial, but the grids print out in metric. Rather than expanding the grids to perfectly fit into the toolbox and jeopardizing the ability for your bins to fit, you are able to rough out the maximum width and length in a simple program and add an extra buffer of plastic on either side to lock the grids into place.

The real simplicity of this system is the Gridfinity generator, which is a browser-based program that lets you very easily customize grids and bins with text input and requires zero knowledge of CAD or 3-D design. Simply measure your space in metric and plug those values into the generator and voila! You now have a file ready to download and feed into your 3-D printer’s slicing software.

“Whoa, Brenden, I don’t have a 3-D printer. Those things are huge and expensive!”

They’re actually incredibly small and inexpensive now. However, not everyone has the expendable income or the space for a 3-D printer and that’s totally understandable. Your local library branches in Bonner County both have 3-D printers at your disposal; for a small fee to cover the cost of filament, the library can print out any STL file you provide, so long as it meets some important criteria.

The library wants to ensure everyone has fair and equal access to the 3-D printers. Because of this, we limit the number of prints anyone can order at one time to 10, while also capping print time per print at 10 hours. We can make exceptions to these rules, but it will have to run through a supervisor first.

Some of the most frustrating items to try and store are oddly-shaped tools like scissors and clippers. There are some high-tech tricks available at our disposal that require very little effort or knowledge to utilize in order to create a custom cutout to slot into our Gridfinity setup.

The first step will be to trace an outline of the object you’re trying to make an inset for onto a piece of white paper — use a Sharpie for great contrast. Take a picture of the outline with your phone and then feed it into a free SVG converter on your internet browser. You can then take this SVG file and load it into another browser-based program called Tinkercad that should create a three-dimensional version of your outline. You can import a Gridfinity bin from the generator, overlay your custom tool shape and convert it into a hole and merge the two shapes and you’re done! The hole will cut out of your bin, which you can then 3-D print.

If you blacked out a little bit there, don’t worry. The library has a free Tinkercad class on Wednesdays at noon in The Lab. We have limited computers available, but you are free to bring your own laptop to learn a few tricks in a very exciting new skill. 3-D design for basic functions like this is extremely empowering and gives you agency in the design of your space — no more worrying about buying something from a department store and realizing it doesn’t really fit your space. These skills can also be incorporated into creating things other people want to buy, turning your hobby into a source of income.

Are you curious about 3-D design or 3-D printing in general? Don’t hesitate to reach out to the library via email at [email protected], or my email: [email protected]. 

Stay curious, 7B.