Introduction: Organize a Mechanics Toolbox Wrench Drawer With Your 3d Printer

By Builtoverbot
About: We are a husband and wife design team that makes things. You can find most of our 3d printable designs posted for free on our thangs profile that is linked off our website.

This is how I started the organization of my cart. I work as a full time mechanic and wanted solutions to organize my toolbox to improve efficiency and I am sick of the cheap organizers that fall apart or break. The solutions I found would cost more than the cost of buying a 3d printer and making my own and since I own a 3d printer I went that path. I have shared all of the files I created for free to anyone who wants to use them and will be adding more as I design them. I will be doing multiple toolboxes over time.

Supplies

3d Printer

Free Gridfinity STL Files you can find on thangs

2kg of your fav color of plastic

Step 1: Buy or Find a Frind With a 3d Printer

Buy or find a person with a 3d printer, lots of people with 3d printers will be willing to print files for little above the cost of plastic. Most mechanics have hundreds of dollars invested in organizing tools to make it efficient to work. The single drawer I am using as a example alone would have cost $300 just for the basic organizers. By the time I finish with my toolboxes I will have saved over a thousand dollars even if I had bought a 3d printer just for this. Also while I printed the ones shown in black you can make your any color you want allowing for the coolest toolbox in the shop.

Step 2: Look Into Gridfinity

Look into the Gridfinity system and see what is already done for you. Before you design your own tool organizers you need to see if you can find some already done for you. I have a few located in my thangs profile if you want to see examples. Most of the organizers you can print have holes for magnets allowing you to use them without a base however I move my cart around a lot and wanted more security.

Step 3: Start Printing

I started with open end wrenches for my organizing. I could not find a modular system that worked perfect for me so I designed one myself. I have released the files for anyone to print for themself for free. You can download the files on my thangs profile. https://than.gs/u/76405 I have 4 Wrench or plier options right now one for raised panel wrenches or pliers that will hold 2 per holder, one that has a large v for large wrenches, one v design for most mid size wrenches and one that holds 4 smaller ones per holder.

Step 4: Print a Base and Install in the Drawer

I did a quite a few gridfinity socket organizers before I started the wrench organizer as those are easier to use without the base. however when installing in a toolbox I recommend printing a base so that you can make changed quickly and securely. I felt I could not make a better design than this one https://www.printables.com/model/430144-gridfinity-base-with-snap-connectors so I did not design one myself. One of the perks of the gridfinity system is the open source nature of it allowing anyone to make a design and add to it. I will be uploading a lot of designs as I do more tools but I will likely always search to see if someone else did the work for me.

Step 5: Finish the Organization

Organize your drawer for a start. The best feature of the gridfinity system is as you make organizers for all of your tools you can just move anything around. I have also done my nuts and bolt organizers so they will just pull out and sit in my work cart allowing me to have anything I need at my finger tips. When I am done I will be able to quickly reconfigure the cart at any point to whatever tasks I am doing that day. Allowing me to see the organizers of all the tools I have out and not loose tools from unusual tools being in my cart.