Art Supply Drawers

thingiverse

We were tasked with creating something that would simplify a teacher's life, so we met with one of the art teachers. She showed us her cabinet, which was large but had limited space at the bottom. She told us she wanted to make better use of the space, so we decided to design sliding drawers that could hang from the top shelf, freeing up room in the top section. There are 9 pieces that form the frame for the drawers; 3 middle pieces, 3 right pieces, and 3 left pieces. Each piece has a hole at the top, allowing it to be screwed into the bottom of the wooden shelf. The 9 pieces have indentations on the sides, so the drawers can fit snugly in place. Between each set of 3 frame pieces, there are 3 track extenders that create a solid platform for the drawers to slide along. These pieces stay in place with thin metal rods and have small holes to keep them attached. So, there are a total of 9 frame pieces and 18 track extenders. The drawer itself has a main frame that is 3D printed, but the side walls, back wall, and bottom are made of cardboard. There are small edges on each side and two on the bottom that allow the cardboard to fit tightly in place. There are also four small caps that go on top of the cardboard and are glued in place to ensure it's secure. There is a left cap, a right cap, and two identical front caps. The metal rods we used can be found at Amazon under the product "Uxcell Stainless Steel Round Bar (20 Piece), 300mm x 2mm". The design process was lengthy, and our initial model used too much filament to make it cheaper than buying regular drawers. So we redesigned it to be just a frame and used cardboard to make the bottom and walls of the drawers. Additionally, the model went through many changes in sliding mechanisms because of the orientation of the print, which resulted in spaghetti-like printing issues.