I lucked into 8 CD drawers of quite substantial quality, IT department at work was throwing them out.

I needed some drawers for storing larger loose bits, tools (which were cramming my parts boxes), in-work projects etc.

So, what a great find these old CD drawers were.

Flashforge Finder

No

Yes

Standard (out of box for Flashprint)

Hexagonal, 15%

I did this print 210C

Pegs get press fitted into holes.

I measured out the slots in the bottom of the drawer (that used to take the flip dividers). I then made a test piece (supplied).

I measured up my trusty 5 plier set from Jaycar (www.jaycar.com.au).

There are four pliers and a cutter in the set. Notice the pliers open up further (at rest) than does the cutter. Therefore this need a 4+1 setup.

You will note that the spring faces the opposite direction to the hinge so it then (more or less) rests at 90 degrees to the frame. So a diamond shape (a rotated square) was selected. It could just as easily been a triangle, except structure around pins would flare a triangle out too far - or so I felt.

I set the post length by the width of the handles.

It occured it might make sense to make it modular, so I could use this other pliers I have (I have at least 8 other small pliers). It turns out that using the two diamonds allows the Duratech and the other smaller pliers to sit quite comfortably. I just need make a smaller set of posts for the smaller pliers. (Duratech A 16mm and Duratech A 10mm).

The outlier is the Duratech cutter, so I made a u-shaped holder (Duratech B) for that to fit at the end, rather than in-between, supports.

It also turned out that the Duratech set are the largest pliers you can fit in the drawer. The longer of the Duratech set has its handle touching drawer floor (by design) to just touch top of case when you push the drawer in. There is space enough in the 16mm posts to allow the longest plier to "duck". There is no jamming etc., just a light brushing as the plier rocks. So, phew!

Plenty of "head room" for my smaller pliers and cutters, as there is for the other shorter Duratech pliers.

The ends were simple. I added meat to the test file to act as one end. I was resigned to having two different designs for each end as I was not guaranteed to have the pairs of supports line up with pairs of slots - without fiddling.

Turns out, that frees things up. One thing I noticed, with half the rack assembled, I had done a good job of sizing the test piece. You can see how, without a support at the other end, the half assembled rack can hold the weight of four pliers.

So, with the initial print, I did not consider the layer thickness and went with defaults. Fine if you put the thing together and don't intent pulling it apart.

As I was experimenting, I did notice I broke the pins off the pinned plate. Then, when I pulled the rack apart as an experiment, shambles.

So I am reprinting with 5 layers top and bottom. 35% fill (instead of the default 15%). 5 layers on edge.

I only pulled the thing apart, in any event, because it was first experiment so lessons well learned.

So, 5 layers et al. I mistakenly pushed a 10mm and 16mm together where i meant to pick up two 16mm. The print is sturdier BUT will still break (not tear).

The stiffness also makes the pins harder to press in.

The thicker print is also more prone to warping so a few wobble bits now plague me.

So, recommendations are print thin to allow for easy press fitting. DO NOT PULL APART!

Not worth fixing the fiddly bits like the warping. Chalking it up to experience (I am still working this 3D printing lark out).

Might be interesting to know how you might print with solid pins? I assume you need a really fancy slicer to be able to select volumes to print with different densities. I wonder if there is a slicer out there that does that?

So, my calipers are accurate to 0.1mm. I will need to by digital calipers down to 0.01mm.

The little clip I design to lock the draws together is slightly too large.

I found printing them with scaling at 80% was perfect. So, I won't mod the stl as there may need be tuning in practice anyway.

Above you can see 1) the clips that I printed, that were missing from the items I obtained from our IT department throwout, 2) the caliper holder I designed to keep the calipers from disappearing in the melee on my workbench.

The clipse were printed at 90% scale (versus the STL I uploaded). That fits snuggly but does not need a stupid amount of exertion to insert.