Mini Tool Box 100% 3D Printed no glue no fasteners

Update 2025-0319

Added Shelf and Drawer Gridfinity options as well as 21mm Gridfinity vase mode bin.

Update 2025-0311

I finally tried printing this in PLA with a 0.4mm nozzle and NOTHING fit ! ouch. with the 1mm nozzle and petg its a perfect fit. I tweaked the files to allow more tolerance (back bottom left and right files) if you already printed parts you may need to snip and sand the parts that insert into holes.

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I saw that absolutely adorable little tool box on Temu and Amazon around $40 or so. I want like 10 of them well I don't have $400 so I designed my own. all in Tinkercad.

No Support. No Glue. No Fasteners AT ALL. you use pieces of filament to assemble it like a puzzle.

I printed mine in PETG with a 1mm nozzle (took some fine tuning of thin wall and single extrusion behaviour to get it right. Will print Easier with a 0.4mm nozzle but will also take many many times longer to print. with the 1mm nozzle it takes a bit under 1 kilo of plastic to print should be a lot less with a 0.4mm I have not tried that yet.

I am also working on the “add on” bottom chest (its almost done just need to print the 2L and 3L drawers to make sure the tols are good the frame for the XL and XXL both printed great.

If your holes are sloppy a 2mm x 160mm drill bit (around $6 for 2 on amazon) cleans them up really nicely but if you get the slice right it requires almost zero clean up at all. The filament just shoves in.

leave one side “OFF” when assembling (the longer joiners are captures between the sides IE one must be off to install them) then the last side goes on. slide filament in till it reaches or pops out the other end snip it flush.

This also means the model is serviceable you can disassemble it and replace/upgrade components if you want. I advice PETG filament for the joiner filament as its less likely to shatter (pla gets brittle in this function) but you can print this in PLA fine just be aware of temperatures in say hot cars.

I would print with 4 walls/perimenters and 25% GRID infill. rec infill tends to fail and delaminate on me.

for many of the parts you can elect to NOT print the top of bottom layers for examples the bottom part I print top but no bottom layers. for the sides I print top and bottom layers for the back I print no top and for the “lid” front and top I print no top and use a nice larger “hexagon” infill with a transparent filament. looks real nice. the hinges I print top and bottom with good infill for strength as they are a high stress component.

I am super pleased with the results so far. they have come out amazingly well.

I am going to fab up some gridfinity inserts for this as well. on a normal I3 printer print one at a time except the drawer pulls. those I do 3 time sequential print 4 bottom vase mode.

On a 3x3 printer you can print 2 and 3 parts at a time. I do the LID parts one at a time since cosmetically you want them to print very clean.