Bees do it, why shouldn't we do it?  Hexagonal storage I mean.

Somewhere I picked up a wooden storage box made by Ikea, and started using it to store batteries. Ikea still sells these: MOPPE Mini storage chest, birch plywood 16 ½x7x12 5/8 "

It's useful for storing a variety of batteries, but the way I was storing them was not an efficient use of space, and it was not easy to see how many I had left when they were all piled on top of each other. 

My solution was to design this hexagonal frame to hold AA batteries in honey-comb like arrangement. This is an efficient use of space (ask the bees!), and I can easily see how many batteries are left. A couple of things to note:

• This is for AA size batteries only (I may do something similar for other sizes later)
• The frame is “bottomless” - you can't pick up a frame full of batteries, the frame must be in a box, drawer, etc.
• The frames are sized so that 3 will fit into the depth of an Ikea drawer; this was specific to my need, but a frame is small enough to fit other storage spaces
• Each frame holds 12 batteries

Print Instructions

Print in PLA with 0.3mm layer height using the 3mf or gcode files provided. Notes these are designed to print with 0.3mm layer height.

CAD

The OnShape 3D CAD files for this are here :

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/4e87dc4bab222016d6a78f17/w/8cea1d18aa2fce0d7bb353f9/e/f6450f11af22aa540f056f17