Filed in Engineering and Inventions , Workshop on Friday, July 27. 2018

3D-Printed Organizer Bins for Crimp Terminals

3D-printed bins, in black PLA, keep a larger variety of parts organized.

I recently needed to crimp some right-angle “flag”-style quick-disconnect terminals, which meant buying yet another crimp tool (turns out you can't use the same one you use for straight terminals) and yet more small parts, which of course have to be kept organized. To replace the various disconnected organizers I was using for this type of part I purchased a 15-inch Flambeau Merchant Box with lift-out tray, $19.99 at Orchard Supply.

I used the lift-out tray to acommodate a sheet of 1 1/8 inch Kaizen foam, a product I've used before to make drawer organizers for my office. Kaizen foam is made of layers that can be peeled from each other (but not as cleanly as you might want), so that you can draw an outline of a tool on the foam, cut straight down to the appropriate depth using a razor blade or other knife, and then hollow out the foam to that depth by digging with your fingers. This gave me a place for my crimp tools plus some room for future expansion.

Underneath the foam sheet in the lift-out tray is a perfect place to keep whatever documents come with the crimp tools.

However, I had so many different types of crimp terminals that I needed to increase the resolution, so to speak, of the divider part of the organizer box. So I designed some small 3D-printable bins that could fit inside the dividers. Fortunately the original designer of the Flambeau box had made most of the divisions either two or three multiples of the same number wide, so it was easy to design my own bins to be universal for both sizes. The only complication came at the outside dividers, where the draft and fillet of the outside of the organizer box meant I had to also print some slightly narrower bins for those locations. Both parts I've included below, along with a link to the Onshape document if you'd like to make some changes to this design.

This seems like it will be a good solution for storing my crimp terminals and tools. It's good that the tools and parts are associated with each other and as these things are often used away from the workshop to fix appliances and so forth, having the collection so portable will probably be useful.

Two Comments So Far

August 06, 2018

Dillon Nichols says:

Wow, what a great idea and simple execution. I have lots of similar cases and parts moving around from bin to bin. These little trays are perfect. Thanks for sharing!