3D print your own stackable storage bins / trays. This handy 3D model file will allow you to print your own so that you can organise all of your screws, nuts & bolts, nails, electronic components or anything that you can think of.

They are 6cm deep, 12cm long and 8cm wide, but of course using your 3D printer software you can scale them up or down to suit your purpose. The advantage that they have over bins that you buy, at least the low cost ones, is that the rigidity of the plastic filament means they are less prone to buckling, a common problem that we have found. You can of course increase there strength by changing the material that you use to print them in. We have so far only used PLA Filament but other types, like ABS or ColorFabb XT filament may also be a useful alternative.

So feel free to download the files and please send us some pictures of successful prints and suggestions for improvements.

3D model design

We, as always used Freecad to design the model. The process essentially involved creating 2 sketches in the freecad sketch workbench, one for the inside of the object and one for the outside, extruding these to solids and then cutting the inner solid from the outer.

Step 1.

Create a Go to the Sketch work bench and create sketches for the main bin of the design, both the outside and also the inside, the area that you want to cut away. We did both of these in the YZ plane. Remember to constrain your models with length specifications for each dimension of the outside shape. It is also a good idea to anchor one corner to the 0,0 coordinates using the lock constrain. That way it is easier to position all subsequent sketches.

The inner sketch needs to be positioned above the Z height of the outer so that you can have a floor to your box. The top half of the angled front of the inner sketch was also extended beyond the outer sketch so that this area was completely removed when the solids are created and cut from one another.

Step 2.

Turn both sketches created in the previous step into solids by extruding them using the extrude tool on the Part workbench. Once you have your solids then cut the inner solid from the external. This will leave you with the main shape. We would recommend that you then simplify this cut using the simplify solid tool of the part workbench.

Step 3.

Next we created the rim that is used so that you can stack the bins, so go back to the sketch workbench. This was again down be creating 2 sketches, one for the inner shape and one for the outer shape. These sketches were created in the XY plane. When creating the sketches you should offset the Z height by the height of the solid that you have already created, minus a small amount, so that when you go to join the rim to the main body that they can be easily fused in the right place. The outer sketch has a width slightly larger than the outside width of the box and extends behind the box.

Step 4.

Next go, again, to the part workbench and extrude both the inner and outer rims to created solids and cut the inner from the outer to create your rim solid shape.

Step 5.

Lastly, still on the part workbench fuse both the bin and the rim solids to create your 3D printable stackable storage bin. We then simplified this sold and finally added a fillet to the underside edge that joins the bin and the rim so that there would be support for the rim when 3D printing. The last thing to do is to create the final simplified solid shape and the export that as a .STL file.

3D printer settings

We initially printed at 0.28mm layer resolution but the print time for this was 6hrs+ so we then switched to a low resolution layer setting of 0.74mm with our 0.8mm nozzle fitted to our Prusa i3 rework that reduced the print time to 2hrs. It’s a 1 piece basic model.