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gridfinity-bin

A parametric Gridfinity bin generator written from scratch in OpenSCAD, with no external libraries.

Configure one in your browser → — no install, no account. The page runs this same gridfinity.scad through OpenSCAD compiled to WebAssembly, so the STL it hands you is the one the command line would produce.

A 1x1x3 bin with cells = 4, its lid halfway out — open this one in the configurator. Every picture on this page is rendered from this file by scripts/render-images.sh.

This project is a compilation of three existing Gridfinity bin designs — it takes the features of each and reimplements them as a single parametric model driven by the OpenSCAD Customizer:

• Gridfinity Bins medium size by Plastic Flow
• Gridfinity UltraLight Bins – Modular Clip-On Label System by Muad'Dib
• Gridfinity inserts with cover, divided in multiple ways by mhejjas

The geometry was matched against the published STLs by measuring their cross-sections, rather than by converting or editing the meshes. The scoop, for example, is a concave fillet of radius 10 mm, tangent to both the inner front wall and the cavity floor — numbers taken from the ultra-light bin's actual profile. Where the sources disagree with the official Gridfinity dimensions, the spec wins: the stacking lip is built to spec rather than copied from any of them.

What is implemented

• Outer shell sized to the Gridfinity grid (42 mm pitch, 7 mm height unit) with rounded corners. Total height is units_z * 7 + 4.4 mm, measured from the bottom of the feet — the feet are part of the height unit, not added on top of it
• Hollow interior with independent wall and floor thickness
• Full Gridfinity foot profile (0.8 mm chamfer / 1.8 mm vertical / 2.15 mm chamfer)
• Hollow feet, so the cavity extends down into the base and only a thin bottom skin remains — the "ultra light, no magnets" approach. The cavity inside a foot is a single taper rather than a copy of the stepped outer profile: less plastic and no horizontal overhang ledges to print
• Optional scoop: a concave fillet in the floor-to-front-wall corner, added as material inside the cavity, so its radius is never limited by wall or floor thickness
• Stacking lip to spec (0.7 / 1.8 / 1.9 mm, 4.4 mm total). Its bottom chamfer is derived from the wall thickness instead of being hard-coded: the spec's 0.7 mm assumes a 1.2 mm wall, and a thinner wall needs a longer run to avoid an unsupported ledge. With a plate under it that run starts lower still, so the same cone doubles as the slot's ceiling
• Optional flush front wall, padding the scoop side out to the lip's inner face so a swept-out part meets no ledge on the way to the rim
• A slot just under the lip that a closing plate slides into: the wall thickens 1.2 mm through a 45° ramp and steps back, and the step is the ledge the plate rests on. Nothing is built above it — the lip's own support cone is lowered onto the ceiling of the slot and is what holds the plate down. A round pin sunk into each side wall stands proud of it and the plate's edge snaps over it into a matching seat — 0.59 mm under a lid, 0.9 mm under a card, which is short and has nothing else gripping it
• Two plates use that slot, and closure picks between them. One is the clip-on label card, 15 mm deep by default. The other is a sliding lid covering the whole bin. Same thickness, same ledge, same detents; the lid adds a tab that fills the mouth and restores the piece of lip it cut away, so a closed bin still stacks. Printed flat, the lid has no downward-facing face at all. On auto the bin decides for itself — card while it is undivided, lid once it is not, because a lid is the only thing that keeps contents from crossing between cells — but either plate can be asked for outright, and none leaves the bin open with no slot cut at all
• split_lid cuts the lid on the dividers between cells, one piece per cell, so a cell can be opened without pulling the whole lid off. Each piece slides into its own column through the same mouth and carries its slice of the tab. The divider under a seam becomes a rail and holds the two pieces on it the way a wall holds their outer edges: 1.2 mm of ledge under each edge, a cap 0.5 mm thick over it, and 45° flares into both so neither overhang needs support. The cap tops out level with the lid rather than with the rim, and the edge under it is chamfered on the same 45° to nest below it, so the closed lid is flat — nothing of the rail stands above it. The rail carries the same detent the walls do, one in each of its two grooves, so every piece snaps over a pair of pins just as the whole lid snaps over the pair in the walls. With two rows the bin gets a second mouth, in the back wall, so each row slides in from its own end — which is why a rail lying across the bin can keep its cap: no piece ever has to travel over one. There are always as many pieces as there are cells
• Dividers: cells is the whole layout, as one number — how many compartments the inside is split into. Two sit side by side, with the divider running the full depth; three put a row of two in front of a single one; four is two by two. They stop 0.2 mm below the ledge so the lid slides over them, and carry nothing themselves unless a seam lands on them — that is what moving to a lid buys. Every row gets the front wall's scoop grown from its own outer wall — the front row from the front, the back row from the back — so each row is a little bin of its own, facing its own end; it is clamped to the row depth. See docs/slot-profile.md for the measured sections

cells = 3, lid off: a row of two in front of a single cell, each row scooped from the divider in front of it. The notch in the front wall is the mouth the lid slides through.	Undivided, so the same slot holds a label card instead, and the front wall is left whole.

Not implemented yet

• Magnet and screw holes

Usage

Open in the GUI and use the Customizer panel:

openscad gridfinity.scad

Render an STL:

openscad -o bin.stl gridfinity.scad

Override parameters without editing the file:

openscad -o bin_1x1x3.stl -D 'units_x=1' -D 'units_y=1' -D 'units_z=3' gridfinity.scad

scripts/render-stl.sh renders a ready-to-print set into stl/: every cells and closure combination of the 1x1x3, with its cards and lids. The files are not in git — run the script after changing the model.

./scripts/render-stl.sh

The browser configurator

web/ is a static page that renders this file in the browser: OpenSCAD itself, compiled to WebAssembly, driven by the same -D flags you would type. There is no server and nothing is uploaded — the model is fetched as plain text and rendered locally, taking about 0.4 s for a 2x2x3 bin and under 3 s for the largest one the sliders allow.

The address bar always carries the whole configuration, so a link reproduces a bin exactly: copy it to send someone a design, or bookmark it and let the browser sync it to the machine next to the printer. Every parameter is written out rather than only the ones that differ from a default, so an old link cannot quietly change meaning when a default does.

cd web
yarn install
yarn serve      # builds _site/ and serves it on http://localhost:8080

node verify.js checks the page against the CLI: it drives the real worker, compares signed volume and bounding box for a spread of configurations, and sweeps every cells x split_lid x closure x part combination for a clean render. The sweep alone (node verify.js sweep) needs no OpenSCAD installed and is what CI runs before deploying.

Editing gridfinity.scad needs no change here — the page reads it at run time. Only a new parameter needs a control adding to web/index.html.

The page opens on a 1x1x3 bin. The defaults in the table below are the file's own, which is what the CLI gives you; the two are deliberately allowed to differ.

Parameters

Parameter	Default	Range	Meaning
units_x, units_y	2	1–10	Bin footprint in 42 mm grid units
units_z	3	1–10	Bin height in 7 mm units
wall_thickness	1	0.4–5	Side wall thickness
floor_thickness	1	0.4–5	Thickness of the flat floor above the feet
solid_foot	false	bool	Fill the feet in instead of letting the cavity dip into them
scoop	true	bool	Enable the front scoop fillet
scoop_flush	false	bool	Pad the scoop-side wall out to the lip's inner face
closure	auto	auto, card, lid, none	Which plate the slot is cut for; auto is a card until the bin is divided, then a lid, and none leaves the bin open with no slot
cells	1	1–4	Compartments the inside is split into; 2 side by side, 3 a row of two in front of one, 4 two by two
split_lid	false	bool	Cut the lid into one piece per cell, each sliding in from its own end
part	bin	bin, card, lid, assembled	Which piece to render; assembled shows the bin with its plate in place
card_length	15	5–40	How deep the label card runs in from the back wall; the ledge follows it
split	false	bool	Debug: cut the model open to inspect the cross-section
split_axis	x	x, y, xy	Debug: which plane the cut runs on; xy leaves a quarter

scoop_radius (default 10 mm) is currently in the hidden group; move it out of /* [Hidden] */ to expose it in the Customizer.

A note on wall_thickness: it sets the side walls, and the same value is used as the skin left inside the feet. Because the foot cavity is a single taper, that skin is thinner than wall_thickness where the taper passes closest to the outer surface — 0.69 mm at the default of 1 mm. Raise wall_thickness if your nozzle needs more.

split = true cuts the model open. Visible here: the scoop sweeping up the front wall, the slot running around under the rim with its ledge, and one of the two detents — the small pin in the side wall that the plate snaps over.

Cards and lids

Both are generated by the same file, with the same units_* and cells you used for the bin:

openscad -o card.stl -D 'units_x=1' -D 'units_y=1' -D 'part="card"' gridfinity.scad
openscad -o lid.stl  -D 'units_x=1' -D 'units_y=1' -D 'cells=4' \
                     -D 'part="lid"' gridfinity.scad

Print whichever one the bin was built for — that is closure, and on auto it follows the layout. Both are per bin size — a card for a 1x1 will not span a 2x2 — and with split_lid the lid follows the layout too, coming out as one piece per cell. The pieces are already laid out, coplanar and a gap apart, so one render is the whole set.

part = "assembled" puts the plate back where it sits in the bin and renders both. It picks whichever plate the slot was cut for, and is for looking at rather than printing:

openscad -D 'units_x=1' -D 'units_y=1' -D 'cells=4' \
         -D 'part="assembled"' gridfinity.scad

Nothing about the plate is copied from the UltraLight Bins card. That model recesses its groove 2.0 mm into the wall; here the slot's floor is the wall face, so the plate spans the full opening. Its plate is 0.8 mm thick; here it is 1.0, and the slot is not a measured number at all — it is plate_thickness + plate_play, so the plate always fits and whatever is left over is exactly how far it can float before the lip's cone catches it. That play is 0 by default, so the slot is the plate. A 1x1 card therefore comes out 39.3 x 15 x 1.0 rather than 37.4 x 11.95 x 0.8: more label area, and not interchangeable with that model's cards.

The sliding lid, the free divider grid and the round detent come from Gridfinity inserts with cover, divided in multiple ways by mhejjas, measured the same way.

Credits

• Gridfinity is a storage system designed by Zack Freedman. This project is an independent implementation of the format, not affiliated with him.
• Gridfinity Bins medium size by Plastic Flow — licensed CC BY 4.0 — https://www.printables.com/model/710839-gridfinity-bins-medium-size (itself a remix of Zack Freedman's Divider Bins)
• Gridfinity UltraLight Bins – Modular Clip-On Label System by Muad'Dib — licensed CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 — https://www.printables.com/model/1481418-gridfinity-ultra-light-bins-modular-clip-on-label
• Gridfinity 1 x 1 x 2 and 1 x 1 x 3 inserts with cover, divided in multiple ways by mhejjas — licensed CC BY 4.0 — https://www.printables.com/model/665798 (the sliding lid, the free divider grid and the round detent)

License

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 — Attribution–NonCommercial–ShareAlike 4.0 International

This is not a free choice. One of the three source designs (UltraLight Bins by Muad'Dib) is published under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, whose ShareAlike term requires derivative works to carry the same license, and whose NonCommercial term forbids commercial use. The other two sources (both CC BY 4.0) are compatible with being combined into that. So the combined result cannot be released under anything more permissive.

In practice this means:

• attribution to the authors above is required
• no commercial use
• remixes must stay under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0