Somebody asked on Reddit a while back, if they should scale Gridfinity to work with an Ikea Alex, and I suggested that they would be throwing away the key benefit of the system (interchangeability of bins). It did not occur to me at the time, but I use a non-standard system for my Alex drawers almost every day (though it's not Gridfinity based). That revelation popped into my head while I was going through some of my old designs, and realized that I never posted one for an Ikea Alex drawer organizer. I designed it back in late 2021, but it seemed to get abandoned (sorry, it happens). It may have been dropped because I started working on something else, or possibly I thought there was something better out there. I mentioned at the time that Thingiverse was having problems, and I recall that some of those issues resulted in the frustrating loss of all my work as I was attempting to post a design there (though I don't recall which design that happened to). Anyway, I don't recall why it was not posted, probably I just got busy.
The organizer is based on a 58mm cube size, so they are rather large, but they fill the Alex drawers up, and use 50 or 100mm tall bins. I also noticed that a 4x4 Gridfinity grid fits within a 3x3 grid of the 58mm based system with 6mm to spare, so it seems possible to make a bit of a hybrid system, or a drop in Gridfinity adapter for a 3x3 to 4x4 grid. An adapter would waste 3mm of space all the way around the 4x4 Gridfinity grid however (about 7% of the area), but it could be worth it.
I don't mind prepping the files and posting the models, but before I consider that, I'm questioning if it's worthwhile. With Gridfinity out there, all other "systems" seem redundant. And I have to bet that in the almost 3y since I made mine, there must be something better out there for Alex drawer organizers. I'm gonna poke around Printables and Thiniverse to see what's out there before I spend the time to organize the bins and set up the files to post. I don't know if the world needs another grid-bin system (Gridfinity is really the best out there).
Update 8/1/2024: Thanks to everyone who participated in the poll! I think this project will go ahead, but a bit differently than before.
I was looking at the design today and thought, "why not just build these with the same standard dimensions as Gridfinity, but larger?" And then I recalled reading about a tool which generates bins of any size using the Gridfinity standard dimensions, I just had to find it - and after a quick search, I did!
For an Ikea Alex, the base unit would be 57.8mm to fill up a drawer with a 5x9 grid. The bins could be 4, 8 and 16U tall, and generated using this online generator (https://gridfinity.perplexinglabs.com/). The tool also generates base grids, however to fit the Alex drawer tightly, the grid base needs to be just a tad larger. The base also has to be split to print on most printers, so all I'd need to upload is the base grid. That greatly simplifies, things and makes it much easier if I decide later to make some lidded bins in the larger sizes.
So I think what I will do, is model and test a split up base grid (57.8x57.8mm) (almost done), and then I'll print some of the generated bins to test. If they work, then I may also make an adapter plate that will take the larger 3x3 grid, and convert it to a 4x4 grid of 42x42mm standard Gridfinity bins. They adapter would allow for using either type of bins (the 57.8mm base or the standard 42mm base bins), but still fill up the entire Ikea Alex drawer.
Update 8/2/2024: I thought I had the base grid completed, along with the Gridfinity adapter. But I noticed when I was generating some 57.8x57.8mm bins using the online generator (https://gridfinity.perplexinglabs.com/) that the bins were not coming out as expected when using the "Gridfinity Rebuilt" option. I instead tried the "Gridfinity Extended" option and those were the right base grid size, however they did not match up when I tried them with my models (they are about 0.5mm narrower in the base plate). I am using (or I should say I thought I was using) the spec here and here. I think the "Gridfinity Extended" bins will still work, but I need to print a few to verify. I found the issue with my base grid though, and somewhere along the line I needed to bring in the base pocket walls by 0.25mm. I'm probably gonna re-work my base grid, but since I printed a few of them, I'm gonna test with a generated "Gridfinity Extended" bin first, and see how loose they actually are.
I was looking at the design today and thought, "why not just build these with the same standard dimensions as Gridfinity, but larger?" And then I recalled reading about a tool which generates bins of any size using the Gridfinity standard dimensions, I just had to find it - and after a quick search, I did!
For an Ikea Alex, the base unit would be 57.8mm to fill up a drawer with a 5x9 grid. The bins could be 4, 8 and 16U tall, and generated using this online generator (https://gridfinity.perplexinglabs.com/). The tool also generates base grids, however to fit the Alex drawer tightly, the grid base needs to be just a tad larger. The base also has to be split to print on most printers, so all I'd need to upload is the base grid. That greatly simplifies, things and makes it much easier if I decide later to make some lidded bins in the larger sizes.
So I think what I will do, is model and test a split up base grid (57.8x57.8mm) (almost done), and then I'll print some of the generated bins to test. If they work, then I may also make an adapter plate that will take the larger 3x3 grid, and convert it to a 4x4 grid of 42x42mm standard Gridfinity bins. They adapter would allow for using either type of bins (the 57.8mm base or the standard 42mm base bins), but still fill up the entire Ikea Alex drawer.
Update 8/2/2024: I thought I had the base grid completed, along with the Gridfinity adapter. But I noticed when I was generating some 57.8x57.8mm bins using the online generator (https://gridfinity.perplexinglabs.com/) that the bins were not coming out as expected when using the "Gridfinity Rebuilt" option. I instead tried the "Gridfinity Extended" option and those were the right base grid size, however they did not match up when I tried them with my models (they are about 0.5mm narrower in the base plate). I am using (or I should say I thought I was using) the spec here and here. I think the "Gridfinity Extended" bins will still work, but I need to print a few to verify. I found the issue with my base grid though, and somewhere along the line I needed to bring in the base pocket walls by 0.25mm. I'm probably gonna re-work my base grid, but since I printed a few of them, I'm gonna test with a generated "Gridfinity Extended" bin first, and see how loose they actually are.
Update 8/3/2024: After finding the 0.5mm error in the first iteration of the base grids, I decided to just copy what works. Since the plan here is to just upload the base grid for an Ikea Alex drawer (with a grid size of 57.8mm), and then use the Gridfinity generator at https://gridfinity.perplexinglabs.com/ to create the bins, that is where I started. I downloaded a "Gridfinity Extended" base grid and bin using the 57.8mm base grid size, and then copied those dimensions to build the Ikea Alex base grid, and the standard Gridfinity adapter. The pics below show the result, and look a lot like the ones above, but trust me, they are completely rebuilt. I also included a screencap from the Gridfiity Generator, showing the setting I use for the compatible bins. I'm running a few of these off to make sure things work, so it's not yet ready to be posted.
Update 9/3/2024: Well its been a month, so I thought I should get back to this one. The one issue I had with the setup so far is that the gridfinity adapter can be hard to get out when I need to access the bins at the rear of the drawer. Access to the rear bins in a drawer like this is always gonna be a hassle if they are stacked, so that is what it is. But I thought that if I added some handles to the adapter, the whole thing could be lifted out for better access. The adapter should hold up to 16 gridfinity units, with a 19U height in total (my bins only go to 18U total). I'm currently test printing the new adapter, and hopefully that will be the last part to this setup that I need to make for a while.
I had considered making some lidded bins for the larger 57.8mm base grids, however that is a considerable amount of work, and with the adapters, the standard gridfinity lidded bins could be used anyway.
I had considered making some lidded bins for the larger 57.8mm base grids, however that is a considerable amount of work, and with the adapters, the standard gridfinity lidded bins could be used anyway.
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