[Update Sept, 8th] Raaco Assorter 55 - Boxes with Label Plates

thingiverse

Hello all, To find a convenient place for all the tools and supplies, the need arose to create something handy for the garage workshop. A good way to do this is using assortment boxes. There are plenty available online. Printing an entire assortment box and multiple thereof is affordable, but there are commercially available sorting systems that are very sturdy and attractive: Raaco makes such nice assortment boxes, for example, type Raaco 55. They have grooves to securely lock the small containers in place when closing the box's lid. Several patents and "utility models" (known as utility models) have been filed. That's okay; it will be recognized and won't be interfered with because the following action is not a derivative, but rather a completely new design with new tolerances and shapes. However, for my intended use case, their systems lack two major features. Color. Labels. Colors are important (for me at least) to quickly grab the right sorting container. Let's say M3 screws and nuts are placed in orange boxes, M4 into green...etc. Labels are useful to differentiate between M3x14 and M3x16 - something you wouldn't be able to do just by looking at a pile of screws, right? Raaco's containers only have straight walls for attaching labels. This is difficult to read at an angle. Those two requirements can be easily met using additive manufacturing. Also, it's a great practice to get better at Fusion 360. That's when I drew some (since I'm a novice: not so) quick sketches in Fusion 360 to have two small containers available: I'm sure they can fit into other systems or drawers as well. To fit the notches of the assortment container, the boxes are tapered appropriately - the taper angle is slightly larger than the original container boxes. Some of the boxes add grooves for proper fitting - no supports needed for printing though. The area of the label plate is 32mm x 7mm for all boxes. The plate's base is lowered by 1mm from the top edge of the container, so you can place them in any direction since the lid has a non-symmetrical lock grid - difficult to explain - you'll see it when you see it. You can simply use 6mm label print cartridges - my cheap label printer has a handy "front panel" mode that outputs labels with 30-32mm width and centers the text accordingly. There is no post-printing handling needed - just print, remove from heatbed, label it, use it. If requested, I could add larger container boxes as well as perhaps oddly shaped boxes (L-shape maybe?). Happy sorting, Hannes PS: Available boxes are listed in section "Overview" below. PPS: I have no clue why the markdown doesn't show the list kind of entry correctly in the overview section - oh well, use your imagination, while on preview it all looked fine, I promise!