Organizing consumables

Posted on

top open
top closed

Screws, nuts, bolts, magnets, bearings, washers, heat-set inserts - They are all there. Packed neatly into a Tanos Systainer3 M89 organizer. Sadly we're not talking about edible consumables here, just project parts. Before these organizers, my parts were relagated to McMaster bags stuffed into degrading shoeboxes. No more spilled boxes, duplicate part orders, and wasted time searching for parts. As I build more and more, it is time to take part storage seriously.

The Tanos organizers really intrigued me. They'd stack along with the rest of my festool stuff, and are the same width making tool-cart building a breeze.

You can buy organizer boxes, but I opted to 3d print my own. This isn't an efficient use of my time (or print time), but allowed me to get comfortable with the exact dimmentions of the box. The box has a grid of nubs set 25mm apart. Each 2x2 of nubs is desiged to accept one ~50mmx50mm box.

nubs

For most parts this works great. Tanos also sells other larger sizes of boxes on this grid system, but they don't have any that scale down.

I was interested in storing some tiny M2 parts I used on the chess project, so I printed small tubes that fit onto a single 25mmx25mm nub.

Small boxes with smaller parts.

These have a detail on top to seal in the tiny parts, even when the box is flipped on its side.

Small parts are sealed in nicely.

Each box except the tiny ones has a small ledge designed to hold a printed label.

All things considered, I am really happy with the Tanos boxes, and the organizers that fit in them! I'll be looking out for excuses to print more custom stuff-holders that fit in them. I'll also work on optimizing print time especially on the tiny boxes. Electronics parts bin, you're next.

Cheers