Use the cut function in BambuStudio and break it into multiple pieces or use smaller like 3x3 and print multiple. The sides are square so you can butt them up to each other.
Don't the weighted frames need supports enabled? Layer 21 looks like it will apply a substantial section in midair! Admittedly, I haven't tried to print it yet, but I am just wondering how that layer will stay suspended without falling down...
I want to use this to hold devices for work. It is really sturdy and will work great for what I am trying to use it for. Printed nicely and I will definitely make another! Thank you!
i wish you had given us the basic measurements to build further on this design (in the description).
it seems i may be forced to install fusion 360 (and give them my email + pc name + ip, etc.) just to get the measurement of the curved angels.
and why do you use non-logical measurements like "45.7959 mm" and not just 49.7959 mm or 50.0 mm? why 41.5 and not just 50.0 ? why 17.7959 and not just 20.0 or 25.0 ? (little box hight 25 mm, medium height 50 mm, 75 mm, 100 mm etc)
a few lines of text would have helped understand why you did as you did. you designed it to be hacked into oblivion after all. but left a lot of friction/barrier to entry to newbs like me, but with the brain to take it to the next level. i hope i manage to get the measurements of the angels before i lose the drive and forget all about that silly idea.
i'm disappointed, but close to perfect is acceptable i guess.
Even if you don't understand CADQuery you should be able to use the measurements in that script to generate Gridfinity blocks in your CAD software of choice. I don't have the block top done yet; but I will have it in there soon. Word of warning: some of the measurements are spacings between two grid units, and thus will need to be divided in half for a single block. You will almost certainly want to make test prints of the block lips and ensure they can still mate with Gridfinity baseplates.
I'm not entirely sure why some of the dimensions are oddly specific; I imagine either Zach set them there because it gave the best mating force when printed on his set of FDM printers, or it's something Fusion 360 did behind his back.
if anybody can send me the measurements of the bottom shape/design + the measurement of the top edges/design. (the interlocking system design). + the thickness of the walls. in a Direct Message, i can have the next level of this concept ready soon. i will work on the prototype designs until then. (plz help the noob - me)
EDIT:
kmeisthax: your a boss! funny enough i also picked Cad Query as my 3D editor of choice. iam playing with it as we speak.
Holes are a little too big, and would not retain magnets unless glued in. This works well, but this is not as clean and requires a lot of time and glue.
Hi big fan here I wanted to reach out and ask what is the license on this I saw that it was creative commons to start and moved to MIT and wanted to see what restrictions are on some of the models/gridfinity system as a whole?
Magnet holes are too big - which requires glueing, however glueing them in is a pain, because there's a hole, and only a small ledge that glue can adhere to. The weighted feature is nice, and provides stability to the baseplate.
Can this not be used without Fusion? I was expecting the basic grid to be parametric, so I could just enter the desired number of rows and columns somewhere, and it'd spit out the file, but I don't see anything like that? Do I need to import it into Fuison and set up the array myself? I only see a 1x1 grid version of the base grid, and a huge 7x7 version of the weighted baseplate.
Am I just being dense here, and there's a button somewhere?
@ZackFreedman Thanks for this (and I love your vids). In the F360 model, if you go with more than 7x7 slots, you end up with multiple bodies, which my slicer prints separately, resulting in a weak join.
To fix this, update the slotsWide & slotsDeep to something ridiculous, say, 100x100, then update the combine step to select all the new bodies.
Finally, return slotsWide & slotsDeep to a more reasonable value, accept there will always be a warning on the combine step, and publish the result.
I did a full bed 5x5 print on Ender and didn't get any warped-up edges! Took a few precautions: did a 10 layer initial layer with no cooling + a 5mm brim and selected the option to do brim on interior as well (in Cura). Worked like a charm!
The parametric source file has some bugs when not using the default slot dimension of 42mm. On sketch 3, I have modified the length of one of the line to slotDimension - 8 mm. Then enforce 4mm on some of the distances for the rounded corners.
On sketch 5, I also had to change the rectangular pattern as it was not adapating correctly to the height.
Does anyone else think the magnet holes are significantly oversized for 6x2mm? They're 6.5mm diameter in all the reference models, which (unless your printer is really sloppy) seems to be sized more for 1/4" magnets. And they're a little more than 2mm deep, so with 2mm thick magnets you don't usually get the magnets themselves to touch each other.
Shrinking the holes to 6.2mm makes 6mm magnets fit much better. All they need is a little bit of medium CA and a spritz of accelerator to stay put.
I'm new to Fusion 360 and running into an error with the Frame template. When I go to Modify > Change Parameters, it resizes but doesn't attach all the objects together. For a 4x1, I end up with a container that's 4-long, but it only has 3 gridfinity bottoms. I get a warning: "The body reference is lost, try editing this feature to reselect the lost body". I found "Edit feature", but haven't managed to figure out what I need to select to fix it.
Has anyone made a 5x5 baseplate (or any size smaller, really) that has a place for the small corner magnets, without the bulk of material in the "weighted baseplate" design?
I like being able to tool-less-ly secure bins to the frame, but the weighted baseplate design uses ~4x as much filament and takes ~5x as long to print as the minimalist frame.
Hi Zack, the parametric F360 frame link appears to be broken on the thangs baseplate page. It takes you to the "Jumper Rack" model (Frame: https://a360.co/38FBsJz). Can you please help relink?
Hi Zack, could you please fix the parametric frame URL? I used the weighted baseplate and then cut it with a face above the bottom, but it would be nice to have a normal frame file. Great work btw! I will organize all my drawers!
Hey man, looks like user brice.bostjancic is basically copying your Gridfinity design and showing it as his own. Not sure if you are aware or if you can check/confirm, but to me the pieces I've looked at look EXACTLY like your models.
The link to the Frame fusion360 file is broken, goes to a different piece instead. I was going to use it to mold into an under desk drawer print for the 4X6.
Awesome project. I'm trying to make a mold using difference() in openscad and while importing frames work fine, all Weighted Baseplates seems to have non-manifold vertices (the four corner of the interior box are shared from both sides). That means that I get the "ERROR: The given mesh is not closed! Unable to convert to CGAL_Nef_Polyhedron." Zak can you make a version that is a small distance between both. I can give you all the details on how to spot this in meshlab. Thanks.
Hello! Thank you for all of this. This is amazing.
One note. While editing the parametric file in Fusion, if I adjust the "slotsDeep" to anything other than 1, the holes for the magnets don't repeat in that direction. They repeat in the "slotsWide" no problem.
hello zack, first i want to thank you for the amazing project i've been printing several boxes for days. but I'm having a problem with fusion 360 when I try to make a 2x8 it's giving an error in the squares from 7. I can't do anything other than 7
Thanks for the upload, watched the video. I was wondering if you'd be able to put together a small video on how to use the fusion files to add to it. For instance I want to build a socket holder for my 3/8" drive allen sockets. I'm not sure hot to make the bottom of the holder I've made mate up with the frames you've provided. I understand that my holder must be in 42mm blocks which it is. So it should fit evenly. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Tip for printing the 5x5 on Prusa Mk3 - I was getting crashes when trying to print, setting the Skirt Loops to 0 seemed to fix it. The slicer did warn me that the gcode file didn't fit, but I told it to shut up and not contradict Zack.
From Prusa Slicer: Print Settings Tab->Skirt and brim-> Skirt->Loops (minimum)->0
Can you add a parameter for outer edge thickness? to perfectly fit drawers and such that are not a multiple of 42. I adjusted it myself in fusion, but parameter would be nice. Cheers
What's the width of each grid, trying to do some quick math on the size I need for my drawer? I must have stroked out, since I absolutely watched 100% of the video multiple times to feed the algorithm.
Just wondered the same so I downloaded the frames and they seem to be exactly 42mm squares. The 1x2 is 42x84mm. The 2x2 is 84x84mm. The 1x2 weighted baseplate is 84x42mm. So they're very consistent. The only thing I have to figure out is the height, because my drawers aren't very deep (about 70mm max). But it looks like the divider boxes come in 18mm, 25mm, and 46mm heights, all of which are perfect sizes!
If you use the weighted baseplates, it looks like it will add another 5.4mm (because they're 10.8mm tall, but the bottom 5.4mm of the divider sits inside them).
Thanks for the additional sizes, Zack. :) What happened to the non-weighted baseplate style with the M3 screws in the corner? (originally Frame 4x2.stl) The frame and weighted style seem the most generally useful, but I can imagine some situations where securing storage units with m3 would be useful and I don't need the full weighted style.
Thanks zack I have been watching your videos and 3d printing some of things from your video and these should help me organize my led's and screws. Thanks for been one of my favourite content creator.
Discussions — Gridfinity Baseplates
just fyi your fusion links are now broken
I'm getting that, too, 5 months later. Thought maybe it was just my issue, maybe a VPN or proxy thing. But, yeah, Fusion says I don't have permission.
still broken!!
I am amused that this system is based on, "The Answer to the Ultimate Question"
How did you do the 6x6 on the Bambu plate? I can't do it as it's over the exclusion zone.
The A1 doesn't have an exclusion zone. For other printers follow this guide: https://wiki.bambulab.com/en/knowledge-sharing/print-volume-limitations
Use the cut function in BambuStudio and break it into multiple pieces or use smaller like 3x3 and print multiple. The sides are square so you can butt them up to each other.
Don't the weighted frames need supports enabled? Layer 21 looks like it will apply a substantial section in midair! Admittedly, I haven't tried to print it yet, but I am just wondering how that layer will stay suspended without falling down...
Gridfinity autodesk files showing unauthorized
Trying to access the parametric files I get a notice from Fusion that I am not authorized to access the files. How do I get authorized?
the frame parametric link brings you to not a frame
The frame is one of the bodies. But yea, I agree, it's a little weird that the box model is also there.
Cant access de fusion files, says "Unauthorized".
i wish you had given us the basic measurements to build further on this design (in the description).
it seems i may be forced to install fusion 360 (and give them my email + pc name + ip, etc.) just to get the measurement of the curved angels.
and why do you use non-logical measurements like "45.7959 mm" and not just 49.7959 mm or 50.0 mm? why 41.5 and not just 50.0 ? why 17.7959 and not just 20.0 or 25.0 ? (little box hight 25 mm, medium height 50 mm, 75 mm, 100 mm etc)
a few lines of text would have helped understand why you did as you did. you designed it to be hacked into oblivion after all. but left a lot of friction/barrier to entry to newbs like me, but with the brain to take it to the next level. i hope i manage to get the measurements of the angels before i lose the drive and forget all about that silly idea.
i'm disappointed, but close to perfect is acceptable i guess.
I reverse-engineered some of the critical dimensions for storage blocks from the STLs using Blender and ported them over to CADQuery: https://github.com/kmeisthax/gridfinity-cadquery/blob/master/gridfinity.py
Even if you don't understand CADQuery you should be able to use the measurements in that script to generate Gridfinity blocks in your CAD software of choice. I don't have the block top done yet; but I will have it in there soon. Word of warning: some of the measurements are spacings between two grid units, and thus will need to be divided in half for a single block. You will almost certainly want to make test prints of the block lips and ensure they can still mate with Gridfinity baseplates.
I'm not entirely sure why some of the dimensions are oddly specific; I imagine either Zach set them there because it gave the best mating force when printed on his set of FDM printers, or it's something Fusion 360 did behind his back.
if anybody can send me the measurements of the bottom shape/design + the measurement of the top edges/design. (the interlocking system design). + the thickness of the walls. in a Direct Message, i can have the next level of this concept ready soon. i will work on the prototype designs until then. (plz help the noob - me)
EDIT:
Print at 99.5% for a perfect fit in IKEA Alex drawers. Or 99% if you're a coward and require more tolerance
Either Alex drawers were smaller before, or did you print 7 square wide? Because I just printed a 6x6 and it's too small
fusion links still broken :(
just fyi your fusion links are still broken :(
Great great great Job. How can I access to parametric source files?
Doesn't look like the Fusion files are available anymore. Any chance of getting these updated somewhere new or updating the link?
fusion links are still broken.
Any reason why the fusion links dont work?
what are the measures
Yes, the meaning of life.
Hi big fan here I wanted to reach out and ask what is the license on this I saw that it was creative commons to start and moved to MIT and wanted to see what restrictions are on some of the models/gridfinity system as a whole?
It seems that there is and error in the Frame parametric link. It seems to be a box instead of a frame.
Magnet holes are too big - which requires glueing, however glueing them in is a pain, because there's a hole, and only a small ledge that glue can adhere to. The weighted feature is nice, and provides stability to the baseplate.
Can this not be used without Fusion? I was expecting the basic grid to be parametric, so I could just enter the desired number of rows and columns somewhere, and it'd spit out the file, but I don't see anything like that? Do I need to import it into Fuison and set up the array myself? I only see a 1x1 grid version of the base grid, and a huge 7x7 version of the weighted baseplate.
Am I just being dense here, and there's a button somewhere?
There's openSCAD designs on printables
@ZackFreedman Thanks for this (and I love your vids). In the F360 model, if you go with more than 7x7 slots, you end up with multiple bodies, which my slicer prints separately, resulting in a weak join.
To fix this, update the slotsWide & slotsDeep to something ridiculous, say, 100x100, then update the combine step to select all the new bodies.
Finally, return slotsWide & slotsDeep to a more reasonable value, accept there will always be a warning on the combine step, and publish the result.
I can't access the Fusion 360 files?? The link just goes to "Site cannot be reached" Is there any other place to get the Fusion files?
It just started working... Must have been something with the autodesk server
When I go to Fusion, I can't find the change parameter menu when I open the file. However I can find it with my own files. Any idea?
I did a full bed 5x5 print on Ender and didn't get any warped-up edges! Took a few precautions: did a 10 layer initial layer with no cooling + a 5mm brim and selected the option to do brim on interior as well (in Cura). Worked like a charm!
The parametric source file has some bugs when not using the default slot dimension of 42mm. On sketch 3, I have modified the length of one of the line to slotDimension - 8 mm. Then enforce 4mm on some of the distances for the rounded corners.
On sketch 5, I also had to change the rectangular pattern as it was not adapating correctly to the height.
I think Divider Box 2x1x2 1-Compartment.stl is not like the other Nx1x2. It is taller and missing the magnet holes.
What length M3 screws work best to secure blocks to the plate? M3 X 6mm?
Does anyone else think the magnet holes are significantly oversized for 6x2mm? They're 6.5mm diameter in all the reference models, which (unless your printer is really sloppy) seems to be sized more for 1/4" magnets. And they're a little more than 2mm deep, so with 2mm thick magnets you don't usually get the magnets themselves to touch each other. Shrinking the holes to 6.2mm makes 6mm magnets fit much better. All they need is a little bit of medium CA and a spritz of accelerator to stay put.
Check your settings for edge tolerance could be inclusive exclusive or middle. It will change tolerance by some factor of your line thickness.
W/ my printer, sometimes the magnets won't even fit without using a heat gun to be able to stretch the plastic as I force them in. So shrug
I'm new to Fusion 360 and running into an error with the Frame template. When I go to Modify > Change Parameters, it resizes but doesn't attach all the objects together. For a 4x1, I end up with a container that's 4-long, but it only has 3 gridfinity bottoms. I get a warning: "The body reference is lost, try editing this feature to reselect the lost body". I found "Edit feature", but haven't managed to figure out what I need to select to fix it.
Hi Zack,
It seems the link for the baseplate page is broken again. It now takes you to the magsafe fone dock. Could you fix this please?
Has anyone tried to CNC the tray out a plywood/MDF piece instead?
I know its been a month but someone has (https://www.reddit.com/r/gridfinity/comments/vxozx1/lasercut_gridfinity_frames/)
Has anyone made a 5x5 baseplate (or any size smaller, really) that has a place for the small corner magnets, without the bulk of material in the "weighted baseplate" design?
I like being able to tool-less-ly secure bins to the frame, but the weighted baseplate design uses ~4x as much filament and takes ~5x as long to print as the minimalist frame.
I made a thinner 4x5 baseplate. It has sockets for magnets, but is not as chonk as the weighted baseplates.
Hi Zack, the parametric F360 frame link appears to be broken on the thangs baseplate page. It takes you to the "Jumper Rack" model (Frame: https://a360.co/38FBsJz). Can you please help relink?
Hi Zack, could you please fix the parametric frame URL? I used the weighted baseplate and then cut it with a face above the bottom, but it would be nice to have a normal frame file. Great work btw! I will organize all my drawers!
Hey man, looks like user brice.bostjancic is basically copying your Gridfinity design and showing it as his own. Not sure if you are aware or if you can check/confirm, but to me the pieces I've looked at look EXACTLY like your models.
The link to the Frame fusion360 file is broken, goes to a different piece instead. I was going to use it to mold into an under desk drawer print for the 4X6.
another bump
BUMP TOO . Cant get the fusion file for the "grid" system.........
Bump
Awesome project. I'm trying to make a mold using difference() in openscad and while importing frames work fine, all Weighted Baseplates seems to have non-manifold vertices (the four corner of the interior box are shared from both sides). That means that I get the "ERROR: The given mesh is not closed! Unable to convert to CGAL_Nef_Polyhedron." Zak can you make a version that is a small distance between both. I can give you all the details on how to spot this in meshlab. Thanks.
Hello! Thank you for all of this. This is amazing.
One note. While editing the parametric file in Fusion, if I adjust the "slotsDeep" to anything other than 1, the holes for the magnets don't repeat in that direction. They repeat in the "slotsWide" no problem.
Any fix for this? Or am I doing something wrong?
hello zack, first i want to thank you for the amazing project i've been printing several boxes for days. but I'm having a problem with fusion 360 when I try to make a 2x8 it's giving an error in the squares from 7. I can't do anything other than 7
Thank you for sharing this!
Love this system. Seems like cutting down the height slightly on the frame removes the rocking of the boxes.
Thanks for the upload, watched the video. I was wondering if you'd be able to put together a small video on how to use the fusion files to add to it. For instance I want to build a socket holder for my 3/8" drive allen sockets. I'm not sure hot to make the bottom of the holder I've made mate up with the frames you've provided. I understand that my holder must be in 42mm blocks which it is. So it should fit evenly. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Made a parametric version of this for Autodesk inventor. It is configurable in 5 parameters: https://thangs.com/designer/bingusboyo/3d-model/GridFinity%20Autodesk%20Parametric%20frame.-62583?manualModelView=true
For some reason, on Amazon, the gray wheel weights are $0.36 cheaper than the black weights. The specs look identical.
Tip for printing the 5x5 on Prusa Mk3 - I was getting crashes when trying to print, setting the Skirt Loops to 0 seemed to fix it. The slicer did warn me that the gcode file didn't fit, but I told it to shut up and not contradict Zack.
From Prusa Slicer: Print Settings Tab->Skirt and brim-> Skirt->Loops (minimum)->0
Can you add a parameter for outer edge thickness? to perfectly fit drawers and such that are not a multiple of 42. I adjusted it myself in fusion, but parameter would be nice. Cheers
You are awesome! You just got a year of Patreon support for fueling my already capped ADHD squirrel drive.
What's the width of each grid, trying to do some quick math on the size I need for my drawer? I must have stroked out, since I absolutely watched 100% of the video multiple times to feed the algorithm.
Just wondered the same so I downloaded the frames and they seem to be exactly 42mm squares. The 1x2 is 42x84mm. The 2x2 is 84x84mm. The 1x2 weighted baseplate is 84x42mm. So they're very consistent. The only thing I have to figure out is the height, because my drawers aren't very deep (about 70mm max). But it looks like the divider boxes come in 18mm, 25mm, and 46mm heights, all of which are perfect sizes!
If you use the weighted baseplates, it looks like it will add another 5.4mm (because they're 10.8mm tall, but the bottom 5.4mm of the divider sits inside them).
Thanks for the additional sizes, Zack. :) What happened to the non-weighted baseplate style with the M3 screws in the corner? (originally Frame 4x2.stl) The frame and weighted style seem the most generally useful, but I can imagine some situations where securing storage units with m3 would be useful and I don't need the full weighted style.
Beautiful.
I am satisfied with the number of frames. GG, Thanks!
This is wonderful! I just noticed the stackable plates you mentioned at 6:20 don't seem to be included. Am I missing something?
I am also wondering where I can find the modular stack able trays to replace the divider bins Zack mentioned and showed in the video.
I've also been looking for the same thing. Could use a stackable plate to go on my Anycubic sidecar mounts.
Hi Zack, thanks for this awesome project. Is there the possibility to get a frame for the ender3 family (3x3 or 4x4 should fit, I guess)?
I've added sizes from 1x1 to 7x7.
Thanks zack I have been watching your videos and 3d printing some of things from your video and these should help me organize my led's and screws. Thanks for been one of my favourite content creator.
more frames please?
Done.
isnt there more frames?
I just uploaded them. I decided to release the video first and backfill the plates afterwards.