Good morning. It’s まさきん.
Today I want to talk about something I haven’t written about on this blog yet. A while back, I actually picked up a new hobby: using a 3D printer at home. This time, I’d like to introduce one piece of that hobby — a storage system called “Gridfinity.”
Being a digital marketer by trade, I’ve always had a natural fondness for turning things into systems. To me, reviewing your household’s fixed costs and turning storage into a set of rules feel like they come from the same root impulse. Gridfinity turned out to be a storage standard that fit that mindset perfectly.
What is Gridfinity?
Gridfinity is a storage system devised by Zack Freedman in 2022. It’s modular, so you can freely combine parts. The design data is published under the MIT license, meaning anyone is free to use or modify it. Thanks to that, makers all over the world have been publishing storage case designs for free.
The system itself is very simple. One grid unit is a 42mm square. The height unit is fixed at 7mm. Thanks to this shared standard, even parts designed by someone else fit together with surprising precision.
What I personally find remarkable is that the community has grown precisely because the standard stays fixed. If one person designs a handy bin, everyone else can reuse that same shape. It feels like the strength of open source translates directly into just how convenient the storage becomes.
How it pairs with the A1 mini’s build plate
The printer I use is a compact model from Bambu Lab called the A1 mini. Its build plate measures 180mm x 180mm, which is by no means large. Even so, I’ve found it pairs quite well with Gridfinity.
If you do the math, 180 divided by 42 comes out to roughly 4.3. In other words, what fits in a single print is a 4x4 grid — four grid units by four grid units. That means even the compact A1 mini can comfortably cover about one desk drawer’s worth of space.
Of course, there are times when you’ll want to cover a wider area. In that case, you can simply print the baseplate in multiple batches, and that works out just fine. In fact, my own drawer didn’t fit in a single print either. I made it using two separate plates, but the seam between them is barely noticeable.
A beginner-friendly way to get started
Because Gridfinity offers so much freedom, it’s easy to feel lost about where to even begin. I myself agonized quite a bit over that first step. So let me lay out a clear order to follow here.
The first thing I’d suggest trying is an online generator site that also supports Japanese. At a site called gridfinitygenerator.com/ja, you just enter your dimensions and get an STL file right away. Even if you’ve never touched any design software before, starting here should help you avoid getting stuck.
For the next step, I’d recommend making use of MakerWorld. This official Bambu Lab platform hosts a huge number of ready-made bins — divided storage boxes — that are already published. I think it’s a good idea to start by downloading a few common sizes and printing them.
Once you’ve tried a range of these, you’ll start noticing spots where you want a custom size. That’s where OpenSCAD comes in. Using a library called gridfinity-rebuilt-openscad, you can specify width, depth, and height as numbers to build your own bin. Lately I’ve just been asking a coding assistant AI to “make me a bin that’s 2 units wide, 1 unit deep, and 3 units tall, with dividers.” That alone is usually enough to get back code that does the job, which has been a real help.
How we use it at home
The place we get the most use out of Gridfinity in our house is my work desk drawer. Pens, clips, my personal seal — they were always getting lost somewhere inside that drawer. Since I gave each bin its own fixed spot, I’ve noticed a clear drop in the time I spend hunting for things.
Another use case is the shelf where we keep our kids’ study supplies lined up. We sort workbooks, worksheets, flashcards, and stationery into separate bins by category. Organizing things with colors or simple labels seems to make it easier for the kids to put things away on their own, too.
With four kids, the worksheets and stationery around the desk get mixed together in no time. It used to be that either my wife or I had to keep track of what was where, every single time. Since each bin on the shelf got its own fixed spot, that whole burden of checking has dropped noticeably. I’ve also written up a separate account of the times we’ve enjoyed 3D-printing craft projects together with the kids, in a record of 3D-printing craft projects with the kids. Take a look if you’re interested.
Whenever you spend money on a new hobby, it’s natural to want to cut back somewhere else to balance it out. In our house, we make a point of reviewing fixed costs — things like our phone bill — first. Doing that, I feel, creates room in the budget that can then go toward hobbies. If you haven’t reviewed your fixed costs yet, this might be a good moment to check them.
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You can try this even without owning a printer
Reading this far, some of you might feel that buying a printer is still too big a step. The Gridfinity design data is already complete and ready to use. One option is to have only the printing itself handled by an outside service. Ordering one baseplate along with a handful of bins together seems like the most realistic approach. I’ve actually written in detail about outsourced printing itself before, in the story of how I tried outsourced printing before buying a 3D printer. Give that a read too, if you’re interested.
As a rough guide, a 4x4 baseplate runs around ¥1,500. Some services price individual bins starting from around ¥500 or so each. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with trying it small first, and only considering an actual purchase once you know you like it.
Wrapping up
This time, I introduced the Gridfinity storage system and how we use it at home. This blog has mostly focused on reviewing fixed costs and making the most of Rakuten Points. But when you get down to it, a hobby like 3D printing is also, fundamentally, a question of how to make the best use of limited space and money. I feel like it all comes from the same root.
By the way, I always buy filament and other parts through Rakuten Ichiba. Buying them from the same store as my everyday goods means I still get solid point rewards on top of it. If you fold your hobby spending into your regular shopping habits like this, I think it becomes something you can keep up without any strain.
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