I Tried Building Gridfinity From Plywood

[00:00:00]A long time ago I started this project idea of a project panel where I keep all of my tools easily accessible and that first iteration is still in use today on my mini fabrication that's possibly the only real thing that's keeping these videos consistent because I know where everything is and it's working out really nicely. I'm personally not entirely sure why it works so well for me in particular because a lot of people keep pointing out like why don't I just put stuff in drawers and the thing like it just does not work for me. Drawers have this barrier to entry to where I it just disappears as soon as the drawer is closed or as soon as I can't see what's inside.

[00:00:40]Now I'm actually fairly sure that this is a me problem. I essentially have the object permanence of a Labrador which is also how I ended up with this second drill over here. It's really nice. It's Bosch DIY. The reason I bought that is because for the life of me I could not figure out where my Makita went and guess where that was.

[00:00:57]Now one of the reasons I think the project panel first iteration is doing so well is because it was implemented on the mini fabrication desk setup which is in the front room. The second iteration of the project panel was a gridfinity system. I 3D printed gridfinity plates, put them over the top of metal sheets which were magnetic [music] and then some corner pieces, screwed all together and had a base mount on there so we could mount it onto monitor arms.

[00:01:22]First iteration had that as well. I was looking for that.

[00:01:25]But one of the things that I noticed with that project is that we're losing a couple of blocks or a couple of gridfinity finger magic right and that's because we had the corner pieces which are locking the gridfinity plate in place [music] and then also on the top and on the other side. And so I don't know why I didn't come up with this before but we can also just laser cut a sheet of multiplex that we just spin and then that way we get around the situation where I'm locked [music] in to the bed size of the 3D printer and so we can do the entire plate in one [music] go and we don't lose any material in that way.

[00:02:01]>> [music] >> Now, I was actually expecting this entire process to be a lot quicker than the 3D printed version, because this is a 120 W [music] Atomstack Glacier laser cutter, and I assumed that it would be super fast to cut out a sheet, but it took me about 43 minutes to actually do this.

[00:02:18]And another thing that I really quickly noticed when I was testing [music] this is that it's less durable than 3D printed material as well. So, plywood or multiplex, it [music] compresses once you use it a lot of times, right?

[00:02:32]So, after that, I laser cut the back plate, and this is 12 mm thick multiplex. This is 250 mm per minute in a single pass on the Atomstack laser here. The back plate is going to hold the base mount system in place. I found some of these plugs of sorts. I'm not entirely sure what they're called, but they have a flat edge on one end with little teeth in there, and an M4 thread mount inside of it, and that will allow us to connect the base mount plate in a very solid manner, cuz this is also where the sheet of metal is sitting at a counter sink them a little bit. If I was redoing this project again, I would actually laser cut two components, so we don't have to do that at all, but then in thinner sheets, right? So, one sheet of 5 mm and the other sheet of 2 mm, and then just [music] sink them into the 5 mm sheet and have that 2 mm sheet over the top with bigger holes in there. That would make the entire process a lot easier. One of the reasons I revisited this project actually is because I started this new website. It's called platlanders.nl.

[00:03:29]>> [music] >> Link is in the description down below, and I'm somewhat experimenting with selling some of the things that I build, and then the videos would be a lot better as well. Now, because we're creating this little sandwich of sorts, we need little corner pieces that hold the sheet of metal in place. I would love to counter sink the metal piece inside of the wood itself, but I'm not quite sure how you would manufacture that properly. Of course, ideally, if I was to sell stuff like this, I would have to manufacture the tools to make this [music] really quick in terms of production as well. And that is actually something I'm really interested in because it's something I already do in video editing, right? I create plugins and presets that help me create content faster. And so, just applying that technique to building stuff, I think that's a very interesting state of mind to be in. Now, of course, something like this where it's targeted towards makers already, I don't think that would work really well. I'm probably not going to sell anything in regards to Gridfinity at all because I think it's a free and open system, and that's what makes it beautiful, of course. But especially when you're marketing towards makers, that doesn't feel like it should work really well because you are already ingenious people who will just build it yourself instead of actually buying it from the store, of course. So, I'm most likely going to be producing something that >> [music] >> most ordinary people would like to have but don't have a 3D printer themselves, for example. Now, at this point, the entire project panel was bolted together, and you can just put normal Gridfinity pieces in there >> [music] >> with magnets pushed into the bottom, right? So, I'm not entirely sure how long it will last, of course, probably a couple years, but I expect that an actual 3D printed Gridfinity last a little bit longer. Now, at this point, I did remember back to a project that I did a long time ago, actually, where I created these panels with little holes in there, and then created inserts for some of my tools, and then I actually screwed them into place. And I think that's a far more sustainable and better solution for this project entirely, but I was just curious to see if we could go one step further and actually create some Gridfinity inserts out of wood.

[00:05:32]And one of the first considerations I had was going to the CNC machine and actually doing it that way.

[00:05:38]Pretty quickly realized that that was going to be a complete pain in the ass, so I went back to the idea of laser cutting it, but then creating molds to glue layers together of wood and create a Gridfinity insert in that way. This is interesting thing that I sometimes do. I already know somewhat in my head because I simulated it, I suppose you could call that, that it's going to be not really efficient and it's not really going to work out. But by doing it anyway, usually you end up with information that you can use for a different project later down the line.

[00:06:07]>> [music] >> And even if if you have a stupid design or stupid idea and you do it and then that is somewhat information you can use for a future design or a future project.

[00:06:17]>> [music] >> And I'm hoping that that is something that we can do with this.

[00:06:22]So I 3D printed the mold over here and that holds the little Gridfinity pucks in place, I'm going to call them, and that will allow us to connect to the Gridfinity panel later down the line.

[00:06:31]Put some glue on there, put the second layer on it, and then put some glue on the last layer, which is a tool holder, and then squeeze those together and then take it off after about 15 minutes. And in this way you would also need to create a 3D printed mold for specific designs, right? So two blocks long, three blocks wide, maybe five blocks wide, two blocks long, that kind of stuff. So in terms of the actual Gridfinity sheet, where we'll lock all of the Gridfinity plates in place, that is worthwhile to do on a laser cutter, but for the specific inserts, that's better just to 3D print it. It's faster, it's more efficient, and it looks better as well.

[00:07:07]I like the project. It's not really sellable, but it's nice to do it anyway.