Let me introduce myself: I’m a long time geek working in the computer industry on open source software. I spend too much time in front of a computer. Way too much time.
I needed to do something to get away from the computer. Something physical – something to get dirt under my fingernails and sore muscles. Something where you can actually touch and see results at the end of the day.
So I decided to restore a car. [Insert scary music here]
Note: while WordPress puts the most recent posts at the top, you can also read the story in order starting with The Car Shows Up.
Any 10 minute job is one broken bolt away from two days of hell. I’m not sure who originally made that observation, but there is a lot of truth to it.
The Imperial has an interesting AC design. There are two flip up vents in the middle of the top of the dashboard. When down they blow air on the windshield for defrosting. When pulled up they blow cold air on the driver and passenger. These vents, plus the floor vent, are responsible for distributing air from the AC.
Dash vents raised
Unfortunately the mechanism that holds the dash vents in the up position is worn. The driver vent will only stay up for a few minutes while driving. Then it falls down with a loud “clang”. The passenger vent doesn’t stay up at all.
With the AC somewhat working it becomes important for these vents to stay up. This is another one of the projects I’ve been putting off for years. Guess it is time to finally attack it…
Remove the mounting screws from the vent assembly, pull it out of the dash, and drag it over to the workbench for study.
The vent body fits closely into a cutout in the vent assembly. There are two roll pins that retain the vent and function as an axle for the vent to allow it to rotate up and down. Close examination shows that there are wave washers on each of the roll pins. These spring load the vent body and provide resistance to hold the vent body up – when new.
Wave Washer
At some point over the last 60 years these weakened. Perhaps wear in the washer or the vent body. Perhaps the spring became less springy over time. In any case something needed to be done to increase the friction between the vent body and the vent assembly.
Something… Something like flexible washers 3D printed out of flexible TPU in exactly the needed thickness. Well, these are easy enough to design!
With a plan of attack it’s time to get going on this project!
Another useful tool is a pick. I have a couple of them and use them fairly frequently. At times it would be helpful to have different sizes and shapes. Yup, time to hop on the Tekton web site and place another order.
This bin design went through a few iterations. While most of the picks had small heads, a couple had large heads that wouldn’t fit in a standard cutout. I really wanted to print this bin out as one piece, but there wasn’t enough space.
After trying several alternatives I ended up making the cutouts for the head of the picks over-sized on the first and last pick. I also put one of the picks horizontally across the top of the bin. With these changes I was able to fit all of the picks into a single bin that could be printed as one piece. The picks are packed together tightly, but you can still get them out.
While my random set of screwdrivers has served me well, it made sense to order a set of good screwdrivers. After exploring various options I ordered a 12 piece set of Tekton screwdrivers.
When they showed up ldiscovered they were bigger than expected. After playing with different layout options it was clear that this set would require an entire drawer. Further, the longer screwdrivers were too big to go in the drawer side to side, so the set had to go in front to back. Fortunately I now have enough tool chest space that I can dedicate a full drawer to this screwdriver set. Off to the CAD system!
The drawer is larger than my 3D printer, so this bin will have to be printed in four parts. Up until now this would mean creating four separate bins in the GridFinity Generator and then doing custom cutouts in each bin.
I’ve been taking an online course on Fusion and learned a new trick. I could create a single large bin the size of the full drawer, create all of the cutouts, and then use a cutting plane to cut it into pieces to print.
So I did exactly that – create a large bin and make all of the cutouts for the screwdrivers in this single bin. I also picked up another trick – creating a midplane between two parallel faces. Using the midplane command reduced this whole pricess to four clicks: select the midplane command, select a face on one end of the bin, select a face on the other end of the bin, and hit done. Bingo, a new plane exactly in the middle of the bin!
Select the Fusion split body command, select the bin, select the midplane we just created, and hit done. Result: two halves of the bin, ready to print.
Well, not quite ready – we need this particular bin cut into quarters. Repeat the process creating a midplane on the other two side of the bin, select the midplane and the body, and use the split body command again. Remember to select both halves of the body or you will just split one half of it…
Now we have four pieces that will fit on the printer. Print them out, drop them in the drawer, and add screwdrivers.
Drawer with screwdriver organizer bin
After using the organized screwdrivers I’m happy with the work. Knowing where each screwdriver is – and where it put it back – is easier than the old drawer piled full of screwdrivers. It does takes up more drawer space than the old pile approach. And is worth it!
After finishing the bin for the new Wiha screwdriver set I sorted through my old screwdrivers. Turns out that a lot of them are good. Some are junk, so separate those out, but a bunch are worth saving.
This random assortment of screwdrivers doesn’t seem to merit custom bins. And this collection is likely to change over time. Fortunately there is an alternative – the Fusion Gridfinity Generator will create hollow bins. And create partitions inside bins. This allows you to get around the standard bin sizes – for example, create a bin that is 5×6 Gridfinity bin units in size with 8 partitions across the 5 dimension. This will create a large bin with smaller “bins” inside it. In this case these bins will be just under an inch wide rather than the standard GridFinity 42mm (1.654″) spacing.
Play with the screwdrivers for a while and determine what width of bin will provide the combination of good fit and good packing efficiency. Use the GridFinity Generator to create a set of bins with the desired width and height and will completely fill the drawer. Print out a set of baseplates for the drawer. Drop in the baseplates and then insert the bins. Fill the bins with screwdrivers. Viola! Good to go!
I’ve mentioned targeted tool upgrades. Some projects, notably the electrical projects, have required small screwdrivers. I have one or two that fit, and have to dig through the screwdriver drawer to find them. Time to end that foolishness!
The small Wiha screwdrivers are good, so order a set. And, of course, design a bin for them.
After designing custom bins for ratchets and extensions there was space left over. No problem – I have more tools to go there!
First was a distributor wrench. This is a two piece tool with a roughly “L” shape which was a bit tricky to fit. Using the standard GridFinity bin sizes required a larger bin than I really wanted, but no choice in the matter – you have to work in integer multiples of the grid size. OK, push the distributor wrenches to the outside edges of the bin and use the center for something. What about the oxygen sensor socket that didn’t really go anywhere? Nice – fits almost like it was supposed to go there. A few iterations and this bin was done.
Some of the tools didn’t justify the work of creating custom bins. For these simply create a hollow bin in the GridFinity generator and print them out. With GridFinity you always have options!
Now for the socket drawer itself. I already had all of the sockets mounted on rails. While many people use GridFinity bins for sockets I like the rails – so, keep the rails and use Gridfinity for everything else.
The process I’ve been describing so far focused on designing the individual bins. While I haven’t mentioned it yet, I’ve been working with a set of GridFinity baseplates sized for the drawer space. In addition to holding the tools, the set of bins were designed to fit the available space. This required a fair amount of arranging and re-arranging the bins, plus some of the bins were designed to fit the available space around other bins.
GridFinity organizers for ratchets and extensionsFull socket drawer – now completely organized!
To effectively use sockets you often need extensions. I have a combination of random extensions from the past 50 years which are piled together plus a good set of 3/8″ extensions in a molded factory tray. I prefer using these good extensions, both because they are good and because I can immediately grab the one I need out of the tray.
Based on the previously described strategy of selective upgrades I ordered a set of 1/4″ socket extensions from Tekton.
With extensions in hand (actually, they were piled on the desk next to my CAD workstation) I went through the drill of laying them out, determining what size Gridfinity bin was needed to hold them, and starting the design process.
Creating the outlines was simple: First create a solid bin using the Gridfinity Bin Generator. The extensions are too long to print as a single piece, so create two bins. Create a sketch on the face of the bin. Make two rectangles in Fusion, one for the head of the extension and one for the shaft. The head size was the same for all of the extensions.
The shafts of the extensions were all the same diameter but different lengths. I learned a new way to make these: Create a line the length of the extension from the mid point of one edge of the head – Fusion will select the midpoint of the line when you mouse over it and will lock the line to 90 degrees from the old one when you have the mouse close to 90 degrees. Click on the midpoint, drag the new line at roughly 90 degrees, release the mouse button, and type in the length of the shaft. Bingo! Done!
Select this line, select the offset command with offset both sides, and make the offset the radius of the shaft. Delete the original line or change it to a construction line and then add lines between each end of the offsets. Viola, you have an outline for the shaft. This is much faster and easier than the manual geometric construction techniques I had been using. I tend to go back to my old drafting board geometric construction techniques. Fusion fully supports this old approach, but it also has many additional powerful ways to build things. I have a lot to learn! And I’m making some progress. Slow, but the more you do it the better you get. Amazing how that works!
To add another extension you make a copy of the first extension. Add a dimension to the shaft length and then edit the dimension to change it to the new length. Fusion extends (or shortens) the shaft. The parametric constraints in Fusion make sure that both sides of the shaft are the same length, the ends of the shaft remain connected to the sides, and that the shaft remains connected to the head. Magic! Repeat this process until you have created outlines for alll of the extensions and then finish (close) the sketch.
I generally make the cutouts half the depth of the tool. Select all of the extension heads, extrude them one half of the diameter of the head, and subtract them from the bin. Then select all of the shafts, extrude them one half of the shaft diameter, and subtract them from the bin.
With cutouts for all of the extensions done create the finger reliefs. Create another sketch on the face of the bin. Determine where you want the finger reliefs and add rectangles across the bin. Close the sketch. Select all of the finger reliefs, extrude them, and subtract from the bin.
As a final step go through and fillet all of the sharp edges. Not absolutely necessary, but calms my finer engineering sensibilities.
CAD model of extension bin
While the extension bins are too long to print as a single part the two bins in the design can be placed side by side on the printer and printed in a single print run.
That turned out pretty good. Now repeat the design process for the 1/4″ and 1/2″ extensions.
In the last post we made a Gridfinity bin for a single ratchet. The most flexible approach is to make a separate bin for each ratchet. This takes full advantage of Gridfinity flexibility – you can add more ratchets just by making new bins and re-arranging the bins on the Gridfinity baseplate.
The downside of making a bin per ratchet is packing efficiency – in many cases you can fit more tools into a given space by putting multiple tools in a single larger bin. Basically you arrange the tools in a way that minimizes space and then put a bin around them. In many cases this can reduce the required space by more than 25% by using this approach.
The choice is long term modularity and flexibility vs. fitting more tools into given drawer space in a tool chest. Of course it isn’t an either/or decision – in some cases one approach makes sense, in other cases the other is the best choice. And in some cases it makes sense to just pile the tools in a drawer!
I decided on a divide and conquer approach: spend time packaging my most used tools into efficient Gridfinity bins, lesser used tools into generic Gridfinity bins, and pile miscellaneous tools into a drawer.
As part of this approach I also decided to do selective upgrades of certain tools. For example, I have a random pile of screwdrivers that have accumulated over the last 50 years. These range from good screwdrivers – mostly 1970’s Craftsman – to junk that should really be thrown away. I’ll cover the screwdriver strategy in a future article.
I have, ummm, “several” ratchets. And breaker bars. And accessories like extensions and adapters. Some of them are junk. Over the last five years or so I’ve built up a collection of good Tekton ratchets that are my go-to for anything involving a socket. I have nine of these – eight regular ratchets plus a ratchet with a 24 inch handle for heavy jobs. Plus a three foot 3/4″ breaker bar for really heavy jobs, like the ball joints on a 1963 Imperial. I won’t try to put the six foot pipe, AKA cheater bar, that enhances the three foot breaker bar into the tool chest.
Studying the situation I decided to put the two foot ratchet and three foot long cheater bar across the back of the drawer and not bother putting them into a bin.
The remaining 8 ratchets were a mixture of 1/4″, 3/8″, and 1/2″ drive and included regular handle, long handle, stubby handle, and flex handle. All of these are useful and needed for dealing with various fastener situations.
Grab these ratchets and start trying different arrangements. The goal is to fit them into a minimal space while being able to easily pick up any ratchet.
After playing with various arrangements it looks like I can fit them into an 11 x 4 grid unit bin. My 3D printer is capable of printing a 5 x 5 bin, so I used the Fusion Gridfinity Generator to generate two 4 x 4 and one 4 x 3 solid bins.
I positioned these bins together in Fusion and then started creating the outlinesfor each ratchet. Once I had the outlines I arranged them in the bin with equal spacing between each ratchet. These outlines were extruded and subtracted from the solid bins to create the cutouts. After making the solid cutouts for each ratchet I studied the result for a while and then created a set of finger reliefs to make it easy to pick up the ratchets.
As a last step I filleted (rounded) all the edges. On heavily loaded parts this is critical for strength and to avoid cracks. Sharp inside corners are the most common place for cracks to start. It isn’t really critical for these bins, but it is easy to in Fusion, looks better, and keeps my mechanical engineering spider sense from tingling so strongly.
With the three bins designed, send them to the printer one by one. Total time for this was over 12 hours, but 3D printing is “fire and forget”.
Gridfinity Ratchet Bins
The three bins drop into the Gridfinity baseplate locking them into position. Add ratchets and done.
Ratchet bin with ratchets
The ratchets fit. Once the bins are dropped into the baseplate they don’t move. This fixes the previous problem with the ratchets moving around when the drawer is opened and closed. You can easily grab whichever ratchet you need. And you can tell at a glance if you have returned all ratchets to their proper location.
Despite pounding my head against Fusion (I still have a lot to learn!) this was actually a fun little project. The results were exactly what I was shooting for: creating the CAD model and learning more, 3D printing, and fitting the end result into the tool chest.
By this point you should be familiar with my approach to something new: start with a simple test piece, iterate until I’m happy, and then move through progressively more complex designs until I get what I want.
So, instead of jumping directly into designing a tray for all nine ratchets, grab one ratchet and design a tray for it. One of the goals of prototyping is to minimize the amount of filament you waste, so start with the 3/8″ stubby ratchet instead of the 1/2″ long handle one.
First, how large a bin is needed to hold the ratchet? You can measure and check. Or just lay the ratchet down on a baseplate and eyeball it. In any case, the test ratchet is one bin unit wide and four bin units long.
Gridfinity base with stubby ratchet
In Fusion select the Gridfinity Bin generator. Tell it to create a 1×4 solid bin. We start with a solid bin and make a cutout to fit the ratchet. Hit Enter and the bin appears as a new component, ready to edit.
Next, create a Fusion Sketch on the top surface of the bin. Measure the ratchet and create an outline of the ratchet. The easiest way is to create two rectangles, one for the head of the ratchet and one for the handle. Center this outline in the bin.
Make this outline just a little bigger than the ratchet. How much bigger? Big enough to make it easy to remove and replace the ratchet, small enough for a good looking fit. A sixteenth of an inch is probably a good starting point.
Fillet the corners of the outline to make it look better and fit better. While not required this is easy to do in Fusion and makes the end result look more professional.
After finishing the outline extrude it to make a solid body and then extract this body from the bin to create the cutout for the ratchet. The depth of the cutout depends on the tool you are designing the bin to hold. For these ratchets 3/8″ is a good starting point.
Done!
Not quiet. The cutout is a tight fit on the ratchet and roughly half the depth of the ratchet. You can’t grab the ratchet – the only way to remove the ratchet is to pry it out with a screwdriver. Not the greatest user experience…
We need to add a finger relief to the bin so that we can easily grab the ratchet. The finger relief should be located where you naturally grab the ratchet. It should be wide long enough to stick your finger and thumb into it – 3/4″ or 1″ is a good starting point.
The finger relief needs to be wide enough to get your finger and thumb in to grab the ratchet – 1/2″ or 3/4″ is a good starting point. And it needs to be deeper than the ratchet cutout so that you can get your fingers under the ratchet and pull it out. I first tried 1/2″ deep, but this cut through the bottom of the bin. 0.450″ was the deepest I could make it.
I couldn’t make the finger relief as wide as I wanted to, so make it as wide as the bin allowed. Extrude it 0.450″ and subtract from the bin.
Looks good, so send it to the printer. Wait patiently.
Pop the finished bin out of the printer, drop the ratchet in, and start checking how well it works. Some room for optimization of size and spacing, but overall a successful first prototype!
Prototype ratchet binPrototype bin with ratchet
It holds the ratchet but could be a bit longer. We can either tweak the model and make another prototype or note what changes are needed and include them in the actual design.
One of the reasons for getting a 3D printer was to print out various types of organizers for the workshop. There are literally thousands of different designs floating around. A search for organizers quickly leads you to the modular Gridfinitysystem created by Zack Freedman.
Gridfinity is kind of hard to explain – it is in many ways more a community than anything else. Coming from the Open Source software world it seems familiar and comfortable. There are thousands of existing designs available to hold both things you need and things you never thought of. You can also design custom bins for your own unique needs. Gridfinity is used to store both tools and supplies. It comes close to being a universal solution for organization.
At its core Gridfinity is a specification for a baseplate and set of bins that fit into the baseplate, arranged as a 42mm grid. Yes, 42 – the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. The baseplate can be scaled to whatever size is needed. The bins can be customized to whatever size it needed – height, width, depth, and internal partitions. Further, you can start with a solid bin and use a CAD system to create custom cutouts to hold pretty much anything. All sizing is done in integer multiples of this 42mm grid size.
Gridfinity base and bins. Source: Hackaday.com
When used in drawers the Gridfinity base locks the bins into position and keeps them from moving around when you open and close the drawers – just what I need!
Gridfinity bins holding a variety of tools
While I have no end of “opportunities for organization” in the workshop I decided to start with my socket drawer. Several reasons for this: sockets and ratchets are the single most heavily used tools I own. Sockets are currently organized, but the nine ratchets, three breaker bars, multiple sets of extensions, and various misc. pieces are just loose.
Sockets and ratchets are prime candidates for Kaizen-type organization where you can immediately find everything. Kaizen organization is even better for putting things up – put each socket and ratchet back in its fitted location. You can instantly tell if anything is missing. I’m already spoiled by the combination of knowing exactly where to grab for a tool and easily seeing if everything has been returned to the toolbox. This makes me more productive and less frustrated – few things annoy me more than searching for a tool I set down a couple of minutes ago!
The good news is Gridfinity is modular. The bad news is Gridfinity is modular. Much like Kaizen Foam, you can fit it to whatever space is available and do custom cutouts for each tool you want to store.
The first challenge is that my 3D printer has a maximum size of 10″ x 10″ x 10″. This means that the largest Gridfinity base or bin I can print out is 5×6 grid units. Anything larger than this will have to be broken down into smaller pieces for printing. As an example, the socket drawer will need nine of the 5×5 baseplates plus two 1×5 baseplates with a 3/8″ spacer down one side and three 2×5 baseplates with a 1/4″ spacer down one side.
Lev Mishin has created a Gridfinity Generator for Autodesk Fusion that is available from the Autodesk App Store. This Gridfinity Generator can generate arbitrary sizes of baseplates and bins with a variety of options. If you are using Gridfinity and Fusion this is a must have.
Introducing the Imperial Deathstar, a black 1963 Chrysler Imperial. This is one of the largest production sedans ever built, and arguably the best luxury car of its day.
Join me what will probably be a never-ending saga of grease, aching muscles, and an empty wallet as I work to restore this over 50 year old survivor to a reliable cruiser.
