Plano 3650 Bin Organizers

Every time I needed some small screws, JST connectors or any other little fiddly thing for my printers they came in those mini plastic bins with dividers. They never work super well at keeping things where they should be as well as just being fragile. I wanted to condense the 8-10 of these I have down to a more manageable size and allow me to get them out easier when I needed them. I opted for the Plano 3650 basic lid lockable organizer for two reasons. First they are cheap at less than $3.50 U.S. and second they're local here in Walmart.

So after picking a couple up I looked to see what was already out there on all the major sites. This surprised me that this had not been made before, at least to this degree and for this organizer. So I poured a cup of coffee, pulled out my calipers and fired up Fusion360. One of my prime goals with these was to allow for easier access to the small parts in each bin. So I build all the bins with enough clearance they could be removed and reinserted. To help facilitate this I added a hump on the top front of each one to give your finger something grab hold of when removing them. After some quick tweaks these are the first ones I ended up with. It is by no means an exhaustive list of possibilities but a decent enough start. I'm sure over time as I find specific needs or see specific requests that these will grow. 

When you look and printing these the first thing you'll notice is there are quite a number of file options. This is because as I found out making these that very few bins are identical. As mentioned above by adding the finger hump it made each bin directional (doesn't have to be if you want the hump in the back I guess). The bottom of the Plano case has fillets all the way around but the one on the back is nearly twice the size of the other three sides. One of the columns can be used a “double” or two singles depending on if you insert the factory dividers in. Speaking of those dividers from Plano, the small ones can be installed with the raised lip on the top or the bottom I found out. I've historically always put it at the top but for these bins I found it made it a little more difficult to remove them so I tried putting them upside down. For those small dividers they can do this no problem and seem to be actually designed to work better this way. The three long dividers on the right though aren't so lucky.

I experimented with some different layer heights but settled on .20 and bumped the perimeters and top/bottom till no infill was needed. Each bin uses very little material and print rather fast. If you want even faster printing I found the .30 layer heights serviceable but I preferred the texture of .20 and lower for these personally. If you find the bin a snug fit first try it in another slot as I found variations in snugness side by side in the same organizer. Not to mention between different organizers. In the end scaling up or down a small amount may end up giving you the fit you're looking for.

Without making this too long, all the designs here are working for me but if you find something not working or have a suggestion for a bin let me know. I included the step file as well so feel free to play around with them.