I wanted to make some grids to put on the drawers/shelves that hold tableware in order to let dust and such fall through. This project has gone through may iterations…

Some random samplings of revisions. Things like strength, tolerances, and print time can be difficult to simulate for FDM prints due to factors like print settings and anisotropic properties.

Let me first lay out what I was trying to make.

Design Requirements

• Modular because I don’t have an infinite bed size
• Mostly holes to minimize the surface contact area
• Spacing should allow debris to fall through but not tableware
• Ability to move dividers to keep stuff from sliding around
• Can be made reasonably fast and cheap

Existing Products.

• Liners
  • No organizational dividers
  • Usually doesn’t have the ability for debris passthrough
•  Bins
  • Not good for plates, cups, or other large things
  • Usually doesn’t have the ability for debris passthrough
  • limited placement of dividers / dividers must form rectangles
• Drawer sliding dividers
  • Not good for plates, cups, or other large things
  • No bottoms
  • limited placement of dividers / dividers must form rectangles
• Other items

The only thing I could find that was close to what I wanted was this. However, it doesn’t have the ability for debris to fall through. It is also super pricy.

$40 per drawer means I would be spending more for this than I did the cabinets. $100 for assembly seems a bit high too.

The first thing I started with was the grates.

Example of dust falling through. That is some big dust.

They snap together and print fairly fast (~10 min) because of their thin width and height.

Example showing “dust” not making contact with tableware.

The fist revision used hexagons because I was bored, but obviously they don’t tessellate into rectangles very easily. After a few revisions, I ended up going with a grid of 64mmx64mm with 32mmx32mm subgrids. mount holes are placed at 16mm increments offset from the corners by 8mm.

In addition to base-2 being easy to divide,  these dimensions offer some compatibility with LEGOs.

//Rant
FYI a brick is a type of LEGO, any claims or social media posts that they should be called bricks instead of LEGOs are incorrect. While the company is indeed called “The LEGO group,” the toy line it sells is referred to as LEGO. It is fine to be pedantic, but you should make sure you are correct first instead of just sharing clickbait.
//End Rant

Part of the point of the grids is to reduce the contact area and therefor (hopefully) reduce the spread of pathogens. Because clean tableware is what will be placed on the grates, there shouldn’t be any growth medium for the bacteria to propagate in, and as a result transfer via direct contact should be the primary method. Or so I would think. Unfortunately, this may not be correct. The interaction between bacteria and surfaces seems to be a bit more complicated than just a transfer based on contact area. In addition plastic tends to be moderately bacteria friendly. The end result is that, from what I have read an my limited understanding, the contact area probably plays a role for short (seconds or minuets) contact periods,* but there are a number of things that could, over a period of hours or days, make the contact area irrelevant.