Cart Design

The main deign of the cart was dictated by the space it needed to fit into as well as the size of the materials it needed to hold.

The width was selected such that the cart could fit between my computer desk and 3D printer desk. The height was set to where I could use the top of the cart for additional workspace if needed. Everyone knows there is never enough space :).

Most other dimensions were dictated by the available wood I had. To avoid increasing cost, I used scrap material from my desk builds. The only other BOM item that needed to be purchased were the four casters that the cart rides on. They are non-marking and make the cart easy to roll in and out of its storage spot.

The final critical aspect of the cart was its ability to hold the plastic storage cabinets I had purchased. I wanted the cabinets to be detachable from the cart as well as properly secured to avoid accidental spills.

To accomplish this, I used the mounting holes on the back of the storage cabinet to hold the bins to the wooden supports in the middle of the cart. The bins are elevated off the bottom of the cart to allow a hand to slip under and lift the bins off their pins allowing it to be moved independent of the cart.

Bin Partition Design

The plastic bins provided with the cart came with only a few dividers. The dividers are small pieces of plastic that slip into mounting locations on the clear bins and effectively double the separate areas that parts can be stored.

Unfortunately, the cabinets does not come with enough dividers for each bin. Furthermore, I found that the provided dividers slipped out very easily allowing adjacent components to mix together.

To solve this problem, I designed and printed new dividers that stayed in place and divided every bin. Both the large and small bins got their own divider creating many more areas for storing parts.