Customizable stiffeners for cardboard grids

Small grids are super useful for organizing stuff in moving boxes, closets, cabinets, drawers and so on. But 3d printing big ones would take a lot of time and filament, and require you to have a huge printer. Luckily cardboard exists and is dirt cheap, and easy to make into a grid shape. 

That's where these things come in, either make a grid out of cardboard, or use one you have lying around and strengthen and straighten it up with 3d printed stiffeners, depending on what cardboard you used it might even be stronger than if you had 3d printed the whole thing.

Customize them

I've used 6mm cardboard like what you'd find in moving boxes. But the OpenSCAD script let's you customize literally every dimension of the stiffeners and even their shape. Open the stiffeners.scad file in OpenSCAD, open the customizer panel (if it isnt already) and mess around with it.

Cardboard grid templates

I've made a few templates for you to make your own cardboard grids (or base yours off of). I've included the CAD files as well as technical drawings here on this page.

A note on painting

As you can see in the pictures I've painted the cardboard white. I dont recommend painting or dyeing the cardboard, it's very time consuming (and kinda expensive), but if you really want to, here are a few tips.

• Paint or dye it before assembling
• Use liquid paint and apply it with a paint roller
• Straighten the cardboard under pressure while it's still drying or nothing will fit together
• Cut the cardboard slits about 0.25-0.75mm wider than the cardboard is thick. Painted cardboard is more sticky than regular cardboard and is much harder to assemble.