Experimental Interlocking Shoerack

thingiverse

Modeled as an experimental design, this shoe rack is being tested to see if a decent one can be made in FDM without wasting a ton of plastic. I pulled inspiration from existing interlocking storage designs, but they are small and don't scale up to accommodate shoes well. I present this design, which unfortunately has so far been worse than hoped for. Feel free to use it as inspiration for something better. I am still working on it, with the hope that V2 will work better. This design is a Work-In-Progress. The faces themselves feel reasonable even when printed in PLA, giving them some strength from enough layers. However, they are also ductile and can bend without stretching anything. Printing with more perimeters and higher infill might help improve this somewhat. However, this design has its downsides: one hexagon on its own is incredibly weak and flimsy in PLA. At first, I was ready to blame the clips, but the faces are so thin that even though the clips hold their edges rigidly, the faces have too much flexibility due to prioritizing material efficiency. Another downside is that you need at least 3 separate hexagons for it to have any chance of holding your shoes, and probably doubling up outer faces means printing longer... The clips print ultra fast: each hexagon needs 18 clips, taking 24 minutes on my MK2.5.