SMD component book dividers

These are 3D-printable dividers for SMD component books as can be found e.g. as filled assortments on eBay etc. or empty on Adafruit. In addition to a filled book I also got an empty one, as well as some extra pages for 8 and 24mm strips. I use them to store short strips of SMD tape that are too short for those strip holders/dispensers/magazines. So in order to easier find the components I'm looking for I made these dividers to quickly guide me to the right size and order of magnitude of capacitor, for example. Besides short strips of tape they also work for short component tubes and somewhat for individual components as well.

I started designing the dividers in Fusion but the variation of labels quickly increased the files complexity and made it difficult to keep an overview. Therefore, I made another parametric design in OpenSCAD, which after some initial setup allows for very easy customization of individualized divider sets that might suit you better then my pre-made ones. With the OpenSCAD script “done”, creation of new sets is faster, but Fusion allows better control of text size and positioning.

Printing

I printed mine in partially in PLA and partially in PETG. Both with .2mm page thickness/1 layer and a filament/color change after the first layer.

The text is raised another .2mm, which I would recommend to print in 2 .1mm layers, since the beginning of the text is under-extruded after the filament change. 

Model variants

Fusion

If you know a little bit of Fusion, modification should be relatively easy. The SMDbookDivider_Fusion.3mf has examples for

• Top dividers for R/C 0603/0805 types and packages

• Side dividers for magnitudes from pico to Giga, which could be used e.g. for capacitors (p to m) and resistors (m to G)

• The .f3d file also has detailed divider for value magnitude, e.g. 1R, 10R, …, 10M, 100M and 1p, 10p, …, 10m, 100m

The SMDbookDivider_Fusion.3mf combines all examples in the same spot (so it looks like one page with all labels) but they are individual part. Just pull it into your slicer and split it into separate objects and delete the ones you don't need.

OpenSCAD

The SMDbookDivider_OpenSCAD.3mf file hast the same pre-made dividers as listed above for Fusion, with an additional example set labeled VREG, OpAmp, I2C, LED and [blank].

To create your own set, follow the examples if the file

• Create list with desired names. Add empty strings to “adjust” the size/spacing of the individual labels, the model should automatically adjust.

• Instantiate your new list as topDivider or sideDivider at the end of the file

• Render and export to create one .stl or .3mf file with all generated dividers

  • Comment out the dividers sets you don't need to speed up rendering

• Import the generated .stl/.3mf file into your slicer

  • Reset the scaling  after the import if your slicer complains that the model is too big for the printer and shrinks it to fit

• Split the imported model into objects and optionally delete unwanted dividers

Usage ideas

• Print only infill to save material (and time? or look cool?)

• Besides customizing the labels in the Fusion/OpenSCAD files you could also create empty dividers and add text in slicer or hand-written with a marker (e.g. the one labeled Fuses in the cover image)

• Dual color print (change filament between layers) looks the best in my opinion, but you could also print them in a single color and use a marker pen to paint only the raised text surfaces (e.g. the ones labeled I2C and OpAmp in the cover image)