I don’t have much space left in my small electronics lab, but i have thousands of different electronic components hidden somewhere in the drawer. Finding a particular part in boxes with mixed SMD tapes is a total nightmare, it is even worse when you need to find a particular capacitor (as you know they are not marked). So I came up with an idea to design and make a fancy organiser for these SMD parts.
The organiser is mounted to the wall, because of that it is always easy to access and it doesn’t take up valuable desk surface. It can be easily attached to the wall without drilling any holes (it uses double sided tape instead of concrete anchors).
I decided to use the popular 2 ml Eppendorf test-tubes with plastic hinges (they are very cheap, 200 pcs. for about one dollar).
A few hundred SMD parts in the 1206 package should fit to one test-tube without any problem . Each organiser module is capable of holding 60 test-tubes. Modules can be easily combined together.
Below I will describe the entire process of building such an organiser so that you can make one by yourself.
Needed components and tools :
- Drill bit: 3 mm and 2.5 mm dia
- M3 Tap
- Very strong double sided tape
- Standard double sided tape for stickers
- Printed stickers sheets
- 3D prints
- M3 x 30 screws
- M3 Washers (2 for each screw)
- Eppendorf 2 ml test-tubes
- Drill
3D printing:
Small items were printed in smaller batches to reduce the risk of lifting off one of them from the heatbed . Sticky pads should be printed from ABS, because they will be threaded later.
Recommended printing settings:
- Layer height: 0.25 mm
- Heated bed: 90 deg C or less
- Printing speed: 40-60 mm/s
- Filament: ABS/ASA/PLA
- Infill: 25% or more
- Outlines: 2 or more
- Top/Bottom 100% layers: 3 or more
- Support: No
- Nozzle diameter: 0.4 mm
Content stickers:
You can put in to the test tubes almost anything, but it is good to describe every container to know what is inside.
I’ve prepared a simple spreadsheet in excel to print some stickers describing what’s inside.
Just customize it to your needs, print it in… 2D 😉 , stick two-sided tape to the stickers and then cut and apply them on the organiser front plate.
Reaming the holes:
The mounting holes on the front and back panel should be drilled with a 3 mm drill bit. The holes in the sticky pads should be prepared for threading. You need to drill these holes up to 2.5 mm to make sure that they are perfect (I’m almost sure that they will be undersized).
Threading:
Then carefully tap the sticky pads (make sure the tap is straight).
Sticky pads:
Now you have to apply the pads to a strong double sided tape and cut the excess (it is best to stick the tape to the smooth side of the print).
Putting all together:
Firstly, insert the bolts with metal washers into the front panel. Then apply the 15 mm 3D printed washers from the back side of the panel. The next step is to apply the rear panel and the shorter 3D printed washers. In the last step you will need tighten sticky pads on the bolts. You will need to apply more metal washers if bolt sticks out from sticky pad.
Design:
Everything was designed in Autodesk Inventor (it took about 1-2 hours to design everything), below you can see a few renderings:
Wall mounting & final effect:
In the last step, you can proceed to apply the organiser modules to the wall. Be careful to stick everything straight the first time, because peeling it off is practically no longer possible (without tearing the paint from the wall 🙂 ).
Links to the .stl & .stp files:
- GRABCAD: https://grabcad.com/library/smd-parts-organizer-fixed-on-the-wall-with-double-sided-tape-10-ml-test-tube-version-1
- THINGIVERSE: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2405377