Gridfinity Could Bring 3D Printing Into Any Home and Many Businesses

Gridfinity is a tool and desk organization system made by Zack Freedman of Voidstar Lab. Essentially it’s a grid to which you attach boxes or holders that are precisely the right size for the item or items that they are meant to contain. Started as a modular workshop organization tool with many boxes, it has been added to so that there are now custom holders for many items. People have made specific Gridfinity boxes for Kiehl´s Lipbalm, Maybeline Concealer and more. Gridfinity designs can now be downloaded, and people have made Gridfinity generators in Fusion while others have made one for OpenSCAD to customize both the grid and the boxes so they’re just right for the drawer or thing.

The system is immensely popular with desktop 3D printing people and lets you organize nearly anything that you’d like to organize. The system has a Subreddit, showing how people use the system to store pocket knives, broadhead arrowheads, tools and more. I think that there is a lot more potential in kitchens professional and at home. Anyone with a maker type hobby or who does something like sewing or crafting or art could use it too. Sharables sites offer packages for download. There’s also a Master collection on Printables.

After some early press on maker specific sites like Hackaday, the popularity of the system increased. But, for now it’s still very much a 3D printing in crowd thing. A new video by Scott Yu Jan, however, is becoming very popular, and several versions of the video have gone viral on TikTok and other apps. The beautiful video (below) is a fantastic commercial for Gridfinity. I think that this will greatly increase adoption. Scott also says in the video “existing organizers don’t organize your stuff…they just divide it up into smaller units of mess.” And this is exactly why Gridfinity is so amazing. It’s also why I think that there is huge business potential here.

I think that a whole lot of businesses could start up around Gridfinity and offer the solution to millions of people around the world. You’d just need a much bigger Gridfinity library, 3D printers or 3D print capacity and CAD skill. I think that this could be a significant and very profitable business. Managed well, Gridfinity could put 3D printed parts in millions of households. So many people have problems with too much stuff, stuff not being stored well and stuff being difficult to find. We all love being organized and having everything “just so.” And Gridfinity can bring a lot of organization to your kitchen, make up drawer, art area, tool shed, work shop, office, home office, car factory, TV factory, cooking class, garage, Formula 1 team, doctors office, hair salon, satellite assembly factory, sewing corner, you name it. In peoples´ professional and business lives Gridfinity could add a lot of peace of mind, organization and calmness. Things could be safer and better to store while saving you time in finding them. Gridfinity is growing, but it could be a massive business opportunity.

To do this as a business you’d either have an online site offering to design and print individualized Gridfinity packages for people. Just list what you have and the person will print out the right sized box and grid for you. If there is a new item the person would have to design a holder for that item and add it to their collection. Then you’d print out the grid and the boxes and send it to someone. Super simple business but one that’s perfect for 3D printing. The cost of these boxes and grids would be quite low as well if you used low cost systems and affordable filament.

Conversely you could set yourself up in a mall, busy street or inside some kind of business to get people to come to you. A company like Ikea for example could build out a huge library and offer many items in its stores as well. It could print on demand using polymer waste while people shopped the store for new things to buy. Or could injection mold common items and then print on demand when people came in with measurements or custom requests. It could then over time build up a library for every camera, pair of scissors or pen. Conversely it could make a parametric tool that could quickly make every conceivable item. Or it could simply scan items that people brought in and create a custom file for that one item that could be printed.

The average US household has 300,000 things. There are millions of people who work on cars, do gardening, sew or make model airplanes as a hobby. For every stuff centric or tool centric hobby Gridfinity is a godsend. Many businesses also just chuck things in drawers. It would save restaurants, doctors, hairdressers, mechanics, factory owners and many more businesses tonnes of time to have their kitchens, factory floors or work areas more organized. By specifically making holders that perfectly hold that particular screwdriver or scalpel 3D printing can be leveraged to fit the need better than any other technology. Furthermore we can do this inexpensively. Yes, it’s lovely to see this tool grow and to see just how many people are pitching in to extend it. But, I really believe that there is a significant multi million dollar revenue opportunity in there for someone who commercializes this well.

Image Kieran E on Printables.