Yet Another Mini Storage Solution by VirtuallyJason

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

Since I've been printing all of these minis for Gloomhaven, I realized that I needed a good way to store and transport them. There are a bunch of excellent mini storage solutions out there, but I'm picky and wanted one that was slightly different, so I designed yet another one.
This one is designed to fit inside of a plastic tote box that I got at Costco in a six pack. 2 trays fit side by side (I set them on a towel because the bottom of the tote isn't flat), and at least 2 can stack on top of each other. I made these to stack with 5 cm of vertical clearance between the two layers, since so many Gloomhaven monsters are 1.5 x human height.
This tray is built for minis with a 25 mm base and fits them snugly enough that they can't lift out of their tracks but they still slide in easily. I tapered the tops of channels that hold the minis in place at 45 degrees so that the whole thing is printable without supports. As you might expect, it fits my 25 mm numbered bases just fine =)
To stack it, just print 4 of the RiserOutside pieces and slot them into the outside of the sheets, as shown in the photos. They have tabs to ensure that they go into the right spot and are at the correct orientation. I built the tabs so that additional layers can be stacked up on top of each other using the same slots if you need more than 2 layers. I glued the risers to the bottom tier of the sheets and then just let the next tier up sit down on the tabs. Then, I can lift off the upper layer to get at the stuff on the lower one. Small binder clips can be used to hold layers together, if needed.
Gluing the risers onto the bottom layer was additionally helpful, as it gave me an easy way to grab the layer to lift it out of my tote box. I think that I'm going to go ahead and print risers for all of the layers, even if I don't intend to stack additional ones on top, just so that I've got those easy grip points for packing and unpacking.
I made additional risers, the RiserInside.stl file. Those are designed to be glued on top of the dividers in the middle of the sheet, if additional support is needed. PLA is certainly flexible when printed this thin over such a long distance (1.5 mm thick over a 210 mm length, with all of those cutouts), so those additional support structures can help keep upper layers flatter if needed. I haven't needed them yet and so haven't bothered to make them, but they're there if you need them.
I printed mine with .15 mm layers and no support.
If you're interested in how I made this, I wrote a blog post about it here: http://objectforge.blogspot.com/2018/09/new-thing-yet-another-mini-storage.html
Update: As I've been using this, I've found myself wishing for a way to stop the minis from sliding out of the rows while I'm driving around (the tapered bottom on my bases slides right over the bump on the edge of this), so I've uploaded an additional version with little posts that a rubber-band can be attached to. I've not yet printed this version though!