I ordered a cool new storage box for organising leftover hardware after doing some home improvements. It should have come with dividers to separate the compartments, but it didn't.
This thing, but without the useful yellow bits:
"That's ok", I thought - I'll just design my own!
I got to work sketching a divider which would fit the slots. The first thing I did was to draw a super detailed and dimensionally accurate sketch of what I thought the original dividers shape would be.
Here's that sketch:
I have no idea what the bits are called so I made up my own names. I called them: fins and lips. The fins are the corner bits which secure the divider into the storage box. Lips are what I've called the middle parts you grab when removing the divider.
To be honest, it was a little trickier than I thought, but the first version turned out quite good:
Looking at this, I know you'll have questions.
You could be wondering: does every penny fit the slot?
Well, no. Not the first time. Tolerances weren't quite right, and getting the correct sizes and angles involved some trial and error.
You may also be wondering: is this guy seriously going to print this thing standing up?
To that, my answer is: hell yeah!
This was one of the constraints I gave myself for this project.
I wanted to be able to print a whole bunch of them on my smallest printer.
But, I was surprised when I realised I could fill the build plate with 54!
I can't imaging needing to print that much, but I was surprised I managed to squeeze so many onto such a small build plate.
At this point I was able to play around with a few of the prototypes, and a few of the latest version. While adding them to the container, I couldn't help feel unsatisfied.
Not too long ago I was discussing the difference between separation and organisation. With this fresh in my mind, I looked at the dividers and felt dissatisfied with the result.
Dividers are great for separation, but separation is not organisation - it just breaks a large mess into smaller units of mess.
Not long later, the label divider was born:
This was a fun challenge.
I wanted to keep printing the dividers standing up and therefore needed to be very careful of angles, overhangs and tolerances. Enough space was needed for a piece of paper to slide into a slot which will hold the label in place.
But ultimately, I did not like this design because the contents ends up obscuring the label.
Perhaps we can add a label to the top of the divider?
I love this, and hate this, in equal amounts.
The general idea works well. After doing a test print, and slotting this into the container, it was nice to see how visible the label would be while the lid was closed and the section was full.
However, at this point, I'd just finished the work I was doing around my house and a bunch of hardware needed a new home.
Once I'd filled the sections, I felt things were identifiable-enough through the transparent lid and decided to scrap the idea to add the labels.
For now, at least.