It wouldn’t be much of an exaggeration to say that anyone reading these words has struggled at one time or another to keep an ever growing collection of electronic bits and bobs from descending into absolute chaos. Tossing them all into plastic bins is at least a start down the road to long-term organization, but they still needed to be sorted and inventoried if you want to avoid the wasted time and money of buying parts you forgot you already had.
For his latest project, [Zack Freedman] decided to finally tackle the personal parts collection that he’s ended up lugging around for the last several years. The first half of the battle was just figuring out what he actually had, what he was likely to need down the line, and getting it all sorted out so he didn’t have to keep rummaging through a big pile to find what he needed. But it’s not enough to get organized, you also need to stay organized.
Which is why he then turned his attention to how all these newly sorted components would actually be stored going forward. He already had a trio of Harbor Freight bin organizers, but as one expects from that fine retailer, they were only marginally suitable for the task at hand. So [Zack] designed a 3D printed faceplate that could snap onto the original plastic bin. The new fronts made them easier to grab and featured an opening to accept a laser-etched plastic label.
To give them a little visual flair, he decided to print the faceplates using rainbow gradient filament. To prevent them from being random colors, he used the relatively obscure sequential slicing option so his Prusa i3 would print each faceplate in its entirety before moving over to the next one on the bed. This took far longer than doing them in parallel (especially since he had access to multiple printers), but makes for a much nicer aesthetic as the color smoothly transitions between each bin on the wall. It also has a practical benefit, as you can tell at a glance if any of the bins have found themselves in the wrong spot.
If you really want to go off the deep end, we’ve seen hackers light individual bins with RGB LEDs tied into a searchable inventory system. But for most hobbyists, simply learning when to purge would be more practical.
Awesome idea. Glad swearing was 🤬 but funny video.
Did he publish the 3d models anywhere? Seems like a project anyone with those harbor freight bins (and lots of time) could take up…
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4614214
It would make sense on resistors in stripes. I have a 6 X 6 set of bins with 2 standard sizes per bin. It is labeled on the top and down one side as a matrix. This would make a filled in colorful matrix. The bins are old though in a plastic frame.
I order E12 components into there E12 sequence. For example , draw 1 for resistors would be 0.1 1 10 100 1k 10k 100k 1M, the last draw is 0.82 8.2 etc.
This works well for electro caps as their is equal volume usage in each draw.
Weight sensors on each rail telling when it’s time to reorder
Could not find the amazing part on Thinguniverse. The link gives a 404
Does this work? https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4614214
Also try searching “Parts Rainbow”. Thingiverse is really bad sometimes. You can try clearing cookies for the site, or a different browser.
I must be the only maker who considers this a galactic waste of time, but if he’s happy, that’s the best outcome. I’m a bit surprised he didn’t add an automated X-Y drawer fetcher that parses a JSON parts list to fetch all the initial parts at one time.
Something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiNWOhl00Ao