[HN Gopher] A method and calculator for building foamcore drawer...
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A method and calculator for building foamcore drawer organisers
Author : evakhoury
Score : 36 points
Date : 2026-02-09 19:32 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (capnfabs.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (capnfabs.net)
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| Foamed plastic seems underappreciated in the age of 3D printing.
| Recently I was researching foamed PVC sheets to make Raspberry Pi
| contraptions. Seems I'll have to buy them online, though.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Check out foaming TPU filament first. Best of both worlds!
| drbig wrote:
| I do a lot of free-standing "holders" from industrial (5 ply)
| cardboard and hot glue. Surprisingly sturdy! Made a video about
| this too: https://youtu.be/s-aNW3h15K0 - all of these are still
| in use and I made more & more complex ones too.
|
| Seems the calculator is designed for a "collection of boxes",
| which I guess is a start, but when I hear "organizer" a
| collection of separate boxes ain't what I want. The most
| significant factor of making one's own is that it's 105%
| customized to the need, no more no less. That means usually a lot
| of thought between "target place bounding box" vs "bounding boxes
| of things the holder shall hold".
|
| For "organize a drawer, quickly!" I got myself a couple of sets
| of "modular" boxes - they have little tabs on their sides so one
| can snap them together like lego.
| lelandbatey wrote:
| Foamcore is truly the world's best "around the house" material
| for quick projects. An amazing trick not used for simple boxes in
| the parent post, is to simply score the fold-lines of a box and
| then fold the foamcore into the shape you desire, instead of
| cutting all the edges. It makes for very fast and fun crafting.
|
| My favorite activity I ever did with foamcore was to make a to-
| scale layout of an apartment my wife and I were moving into so
| that we could experiment with simple to-scale rectangles as
| stand-ins for furniture to figure out our layout.
|
| What a wonderful material!
| xnx wrote:
| Poor/clever man's Gridfinity
| starkparker wrote:
| For finishing or to make them a little more stackable, grab a
| foam or mat bevel cutting tool, like
| https://www.amazon.com/Logan-Werks-Cutting-Straight-Bevel/dp....
| There are tons of 3D-printable cutters out there as well.
|
| Cut the same angle on the top inside and bottom outside and you
| can stack shallow foamcore bins in deeper drawers. Lots of other
| handy uses for an adjustable bevel cutter and foamcore boards.
| hungryhobbit wrote:
| I feel like what got lost here was a pro/con evaluation.
|
| Pro: Your drawers are neater now.
|
| Con: You just spent maybe 100x of the time and effort you would
| have spent if you had just left your drawer messy, and had to
| search through it.
|
| My back of the napkin math is that you go into an average drawer
| once a week, and mess makes it take five seconds longer to find
| something than in a clean drawer. Assuming you live 20 years
| before the drawer falls apart, you move, etc. that's roughly 20 *
| 50 * 5 = 5,000 seconds.
|
| Now, read the article and tell me what multiple of 5,000 seconds
| the OP put into all that custom foam.
| jrussino wrote:
| A lot of times, being organized and tidy is more about feeling
| good than it is about saving time.
|
| If every time I open that drawer I'm a little frustrated, a
| little flustered, a little stressed, that's not just 5 seconds
| of "lost time" its a little bit of damage to my mood.
|
| On the other hand, if every time I open the drawer it's all
| neat and organized and I can find the thing I'm looking for
| right away and I'm reminded of the good job I did building the
| organizers, that's a nice little micro-boost to my mood.
|
| And maybe the time and effort spent figuring this out and
| building it and blogging about it was fun! Like a fun little
| hobby.
|
| Everybody has a different temperament and different priorities,
| etc. Someone may look at this and think "what a waste of time".
| Personally, I kind of like projects like this that add a little
| extra satisfaction or polish to something I interact with
| freqently.
| silveira wrote:
| I'm deep in the Gridfinity rabbit hole but this seems a good
| compromise since my 3d printer broke.
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(page generated 2026-02-10 23:01 UTC)