As many of you know, I’m a sucker for tools, as evidenced by the Tool of the Month series . If you’ve watched our YouTube channel at all, you know I also really like to nerd out in 3D design and modeling in the shop to get things to fit nicely. Well, I recently got a chance to put both to good use as I found myself needing to completely revamp the top socket drawer of my toolbox.

After a bit of a tool buying spree, where I found the awesomeness of semi-deep sockets and some new 90-tooth ratchets, I needed to add some socket-holding capacity to the top drawer of my trusty Binford 6100 toolbox. I had previously gotten a little artsy over the holiday break, and bolted a bunch of anodized aluminum socket rails to some galvanized Wall Control panels, laid flat in the drawer. While that looked incredibly cool, there were a few problems.

The 1-inch depth of the panels meant that my deep 1/2-inch-drive sockets couldn’t stand up in the drawer. The 1-inch on-center pegboard pattern was a nice alignment tool, but didn’t really maximize the available space for rows of sockets. Also, the socket rails I used previously have provisions for a #10 socket-head cap screw, but the holes in the Wall Control are 1/4-inch diameter. That meant that I had to use a washer and nylock nut on the back of each screw, making any changes quite a pain, since each rail spans at least two panels.

The old top-drawer setup. It consisted of aluminum socket rails bolted to galvanized steel Wall Control panels. This setup definitely looks amazing, but has some unique spacing limitations.

Finally, the cost of additional rails from the same manufacturer was going to be on the steep side, as they are not on sale at Amazon anymore, and come in at about $14 each. So to accommodate my new sockets, it was going to cost about $100 for just the new socket rails, if I decided to match what I already had. Conversely, if I decided to go with a different style, I was looking at significantly more money (socket holders have gotten spendy).

Enter 3D Printing

After stopping and thinking about it for a couple of weeks, Amazon Prime day rolled around, and wouldn’t you know it, not a single one of the options I was looking at went on sale. What did go on sale, however, was 3D printer filament. Specifically, black and gray PLA (Polylactic Acid). While not quite the original anodized black and orange theme I originally had, I was able to get six one-kilogram spools for significantly less than just the cost of the new socket rails.

If you have a 3D printer, you know how much fun it is to be able to download a design and then watch it come to life, layer by layer. But they work well for things other than little plastic boats or figurines. And, with a little effort, you can design your own parts, instead of just relying on third party websites to supply your files. However, that’s just where I started, looking to see if anyone had already designed the holders I was looking for.

Printing the socket holders is fairly straightforward, just taking a significant amount of time thanks to the larger designs.

What I found however, was something called “Gridfinity.” Designed by an eccentric engineer with an affinity for alliteration named Zack Freedman, it is a system of modular grid bases and bins all built around a single easy-to-print standard, that can be customized to your heart’s content. After watching his videos, and a quick perusal of the community built up around Gridfinity, I decided to just go ahead and design an entire 61- by 21-inch drawer layout myself. That sounds ambitious, but let me say, if I can do it, so can you.

Designing Your Own Parts

To start the project, I simply took the measurements of my drawer, converted it to millimeters, and divided by 42 (the base size of each grid square). That gave me 37 units across by 12 units high. While you can find the baseplates in a number of varieties and sizes across the internet, I simply fired up Autodesk Fusion 360, went to their app store, and downloaded the Gridfinity plugin. Then, I simply mapped out the sizes of grids I was able to print on my various printers, generated them in Fusion, and printed them out.

Next, I went a bit old school, and mapped out the drawer with a pencil and grid paper (I say grid paper, not graph paper, because I used Kevin MacLeod’s free grid generator to create printable 37×12 grids). It was as simple as lining up the sockets, seeing how many units the stick took up, and then measuring the diameter of each socket in the stick.

The Gridfinity system uses a series of 42mm-grid baseplates to line your drawer, and custom-designed bins that lock into the grid. There are a number of baseplate and bin options, like adding magnets for a stronger hold.

From there, I simply generated the appropriately sized solid Gridfinity bin, used the sketch tool to draw the appropriate number and sized of circles for the sockets in that bin, and then made the appropriately sized flat bottom hole for each. I will note, this is quite simple, with plenty of online turorials to show you how to do it, it is quite tedious. Easy, but time-consuming. Previously, I had all my SAE stuff on orange rails, and metric on black. Since those are on opposite sides of the drawer now, I used color to separate the different drive sizes within a cluster.

Once all my sockets were gridded, I moved on to my ratchets. Again, I sketched this all out with an actual pencil and paper before designing the Gridfinity bins. I came up with a stand design for those, instead of a full sunken-in cutout, because A) it prints faster and uses less filament and B) they are much easier to grab standing up, instead of fishing them out of a pocket. Then I did the extensions followed by the specialty tools. I even did one unit with a simple set of screw holes in it to be able to bolt down one of the previously used rails.

Here, I got a little custom, designing a 1×2 bin to fit the 13/16-inch/21mm hex on this spark plug thread chasing tool.

The Final Result And My Thoughts

With the project finished and the sizeable top drawer of the toolbox fully organized with Gridfinity, I can honestly say, I am happy with the final result. However, there are some things I would do differently, and a couple of pitfalls I can help you avoid, should you decide to give this a try. The first, and largest, is time. If you want a quick solution that will be done in a day, this isn’t the answer. I planned on a couple of weekends to knock this out. WRONG. My two printers have been going non-stop for approximately 15 days, with the sounds of my bigger printer haunting my dreams, thanks to long overnight prints.

If you’re looking for a project that will be fun to complete over time, and help you hone your CAD skills, cool, keep reading, because the next lesson I learned came after completing all of the SAE sockets. That’s to design small. At first I made a bunch of big one-piece units that incorporated multiple rows of sockets. The problem is, if I change one socket set, I’m now redesigning and reprinting a giant 18-hour section of holder. Unless you need to span multiple rows (like fitting three rows of sockets in two rows of grids) design them as single rows.

By using pencil and paper (along with some highlighters) you can see how tightly the drawer is now packed. For you data nerds, there are a total of 444 units in this 37×12 design. Of those 444 units, only 16 are currently open. That means 96.4 percent of the drawer space is being utilized.

The final lesson I learned is, that it’s ok to change directions mid-project. There were a couple of times, when I was sorting through an arrangement, and shifting something around led to a whole lot of extra space opening up. Sure, I had to toss out a few prints, because they didn’t fit right with the new layout, but that’s the beauty of this, no single piece is so expensive — monetarily or time-investment — that you can’t afford to toss it out and start over.

The real question is, would I do it all over again? Absolutely. Besides the cool factor of designing and building all the parts myself, I still have about two kilos of PLA left over. So, if we take them out of the equation, the whole thing came in at about $50 in materials. The best part of the whole project, is that not only was I able to fit my new sockets and ratchets, I was able to empty a majority of a drawer below into the top drawer as well. So, by designing all this stuff specifically for your space, you can really cram ten pounds of stuff into a five-pound sack.

Also, to help anyone who is thinking about taking on the project themselves, I’m uploading all of the models I designed, HERE, for free download.