# Binforge > Binforge is a free, browser-based parametric designer for Gridfinity storage systems. It generates spec-compliant bins, baseplates, trays, adapters, and layout plans with real-time 3D preview. No CAD knowledge, no installation, no account required. Export print-ready STL and 3MF files. Built by solo developer Luiz Tanure. ## Key Facts - URL: https://binforge.app - Editor: https://binforge.app/app - Price: Free. No paid plans currently active. - Platform: Runs entirely in the browser via WebAssembly (manifold-3d geometry engine + Three.js preview). - Gridfinity spec: 42mm grid unit, 100% compatible with the Gridfinity ecosystem created by Zack Freedman. - Export formats: STL and 3MF with multi-object support. All meshes are manifold-certified watertight. - No account required for any feature. - Every parameter is encoded in the URL — share a link, the recipient sees the exact same part. ## Part Types - **Bins**: Scoops, dividers, labels, lids, magnets, wall/floor patterns, AI tool cutouts. 80+ parameters. - **Baseplates**: Solid, frame, or skeleton. Magnets, screws, auto-split for printer bed size. - **Trays**: Bins with handles. Trapezoid or lip style. - **Adapters**: Convert between different Gridfinity grid sizes. - **Layout Planner**: Visual drawer planning. Place bins on a grid, export each one. - **Tool Cutouts**: Photograph a tool on paper, AI traces the outline into a custom insert. ## Comparison | Feature | Binforge | OpenSCAD | Fusion 360 | Other generators | |---------|----------|----------|------------|-----------------| | Runs in browser | Yes | No | No | Some | | Real-time 3D preview | Yes | No | Yes | Partial | | 6 part types in one tool | Yes | Partial | No | No | | AI tool cutout from photo | Yes | No | No | No | | Shareable URL configs | Yes | No | No | No | | Auto-split for printer bed | Yes | No | No | No | | No subscription required | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | | Spec-compliant by default | Yes | Partial | Partial | Partial | ## Technical - Geometry engine: manifold-3d (Apache 2.0) - 3D preview: Three.js (WebGL) - Runtime: WebAssembly, runs client-side - Hosting: Cloudflare Pages - Analytics: PostHog (EU-hosted, privacy-focused) - No server-side storage of user designs ## Contact - Creator: Luiz Tanure - Email: letanure+binforge@gmail.com - Website: https://binforge.app - Support: https://ko-fi.com/letanure --- # Home Binforge is a free, browser-based parametric editor for designing Gridfinity storage bins, baseplates, trays, adapters, and layout plans. No CAD knowledge required. No installation. No account. ## What You Can Design - **Bins**: Storage containers with scoops, dividers, labels, lids, magnets, wall/floor patterns, and AI-powered tool cutouts. 80+ configurable parameters. - **Baseplates**: Solid, frame, or skeleton style. Supports magnets, screws, and auto-splitting for your printer bed size. - **Trays**: Bins with handles in trapezoid or lip style. Configurable depth and position. - **Adapters**: Convert between different Gridfinity grid sizes to bridge ecosystems. - **Layout Planner**: Visually plan your drawer. Place bins on a grid and export each one individually. - **Tool Cutouts**: Photograph a tool on paper. Binforge's AI traces the outline and creates a custom insert cutout. ## How It Works 1. **Measure or pick**: Choose a preset from the gallery, or enter the dimensions of the object you want to organize. Binforge auto-sizes the bin. 2. **Tweak in the browser**: Adjust walls, scoops, labels, magnets, dividers with live 3D preview. Zero CAD knowledge needed. 3. **Print it**: Download STL or 3MF. Every export is slicer-ready for PrusaSlicer, Bambu Studio, OrcaSlicer, and any other slicer. ## Key Stats - 80+ configurable parameters - 6 part types in one editor - 100% Gridfinity spec-compliant (42mm grid unit) - Free forever for all use cases --- # Features ## In-Browser Parametric Editor The full Gridfinity part library exposed as direct-manipulation sliders. No OpenSCAD, no Fusion 360 subscription, no install. 6 part types: bins, baseplates, trays, shelves, adapters, and a layout planner. 80+ parameters including walls, floors, scoops, slopes, dividers, labels, lids, magnets, patterns, and cutouts. Progressive disclosure keeps advanced options hidden until needed. All values are keyboard-editable with arrow keys and Shift for big steps. ## Live 3D Preview WebGL preview powered by Three.js. Real-time updates as you adjust every parameter. Orbit controls: drag to rotate, scroll to zoom, right-click to pan. Dimension overlays show exact measurements in mm. Full undo/redo history (50 steps). ## Print-Ready Export STL and 3MF export with multi-object support (lid, insert, base as separate parts). Every mesh is manifold-certified watertight — download and slice with no repair step. Filament weight and print time estimates before download. Bed-fit warnings when parts exceed configured printer dimensions. Auto-split baseplates into bed-sized pieces. ## 100% Gridfinity Spec-Compliant 42mm grid unit with base profile matching the reference geometry from gridfinity.xyz/specification/. Magnet holes (6.2mm), screw holes, and corner mounting all to spec. Half-grid (21mm) base option for compact arrangements. Validation warnings when settings would break compatibility. ## Shareable URL Configs Every parameter is encoded in the URL. Copy the address bar and send it to someone — they see the exact same part. No accounts, no file uploads. Full state in the URL: 80+ parameters, camera position, open sections. ## Patterns, Cutouts, and AI Tool Tracing 6 pattern shapes: circle, square, hex, diamond, voronoi, wave. Apply independently to walls, floor, or lid. AI-powered tool cutout: photograph an object on A4/Letter paper, Binforge auto-detects the shape. Manual polygon editing for fine-tuning traced outlines. ## Comparison with Alternatives Binforge runs in the browser with no install. It offers real-time 3D preview, 6 part types in one tool, AI tool cutout from photo, shareable URL configs, auto-split for printer bed, and material + time estimates. It requires no subscription. OpenSCAD requires installation and scripting. Fusion 360 requires a subscription. Other Gridfinity generators typically support fewer part types and lack features like AI cutouts and URL sharing. --- # Gallery Browse 33 curated Gridfinity bin presets organized by category. Each preset opens directly in the editor with a purpose-built configuration. Adjust any parameter and export. ## Categories - **Tools**: Hex bit organizer, screwdriver holder, wrench tray, pliers rack, drill bit index, allen key set - **Electronics**: SD card holder, USB cable organizer, AA battery box, component bins, Arduino/MCU holder, charger dock - **Office**: Pen cup, paper clip tray, sticky note holder, business card box - **Craft**: Paint pot holder, brush stand, bead sorter - **Kitchen**: Spice jar organizer, utensil divider, tea bag box - **Hardware**: M3 bolt sorter, nut organizer, washer tray, heat shrink organizer, screw box, sloped parts picker - **Gaming**: Dice box, miniature tray, card holder, token tray All presets use realistic configurations with features like finger scoops, slopes, labels, magnets, lids, wall patterns, and floor patterns appropriate to each use case. --- # Pricing Binforge is free. Every feature, every export, every part type. No signup required, no trial, no credit card. ## What's Included (Free) - Unlimited bins - All 6 part types (bins, baseplates, trays, adapters, layout planner, tool cutouts) - STL and 3MF export - Print-reality stats (material weight, time estimates) - 80+ parameters - Shareable URL configurations - No account required ## FAQ **Will it stay free?** Yes. If paid plans are ever added, existing users keep full access to everything they had. **Do I need an account?** No. Signup will unlock saving, sharing, and community features when those launch. **Can I use exported bins commercially?** Yes. Your designs are yours. **What technology powers it?** The geometry engine uses manifold-3d (Apache 2.0). The 3D preview uses Three.js. Everything runs in the browser via WebAssembly. --- # About Binforge is built by Luiz Tanure, a solo developer who started the project because he printed his own Gridfinity drawers over one weekend, then spent four weekends fighting with OpenSCAD to tweak them. ## Principles 1. **Makers first**: The tool is used weekly in a real workshop. If something is annoying, it gets fixed. 2. **Open spec, open data**: The Gridfinity spec is open. User designs stay theirs. Export formats are standard. 3. **No dark patterns**: No mandatory account. No tracking beyond privacy-focused analytics. No features held hostage by plans. 4. **Community-sized**: Solo project built in public. Direct email support. ## Timeline - January 2025: First prototype built in a weekend - February 2025: Public launch, first bins exported - March 2025: Baseplates and trays added - April 2025: Visual layout planner - Ongoing: New features every week ## Technology - Geometry engine: manifold-3d (Apache 2.0, WebAssembly) - 3D preview: Three.js (WebGL) - Runs entirely client-side in the browser - No server-side storage of designs - Analytics: PostHog (EU-hosted) - Hosting: Cloudflare Pages ## Contact - Email: letanure+binforge@gmail.com - Support: https://ko-fi.com/letanure --- # Blog Thoughts on Gridfinity, 3D printing, and building tools for makers. ## Articles - Why Gridfinity Won the Workshop Wars — Every five years a system promises to organize your workbench. Most die. Here's what Gridfinity got right. (12 min read) - Planning Your First Gridfinity Drawer — A practical guide to measuring your drawer, choosing the right grid layout, and deciding which bins to print first. (10 min read) - Print Orientation Guide — The one setting that determines whether your bin is strong or fragile. (6 min read) --- # Support Binforge is free, open, and built by one person. Every contribution goes into hosting, filament for testing, and development time. ## Where Support Goes - **Filament and testing**: Every feature gets tested on real printers. PLA, PETG, different nozzle sizes. - **Hosting and infrastructure**: Cloudflare, domain, error tracking, analytics. - **Development time**: Solo developer, no VC, no ads. Support buys the hours that make new features happen. ## How to Support - Ko-fi (0% fee on tips): https://ko-fi.com/letanure ## About the Creator Luiz Tanure — solo developer building Binforge. Making things for makers. Every spool of filament keeps the project going. --- # Why Gridfinity Won the Workshop Wars **Luiz Tanure** | April 21, 2026 | 12 min read *The surprising thing about Gridfinity isn't that it won. It's that it won against entrenched systems with budgets and factories behind them.* I keep a shelf in my garage of the organizer kits I've bought over the last decade. There's the modular toolbox from a German brand that cost $280. There's the wall-mount pegboard system that promised infinite configurability. Most of them sit empty now. The shelf I actually use is printed. Row after row of beige PLA bins, each sized to the specific thing it holds: M3 bolts in one, drill bits in another, the USB-C cables I use daily in a third. The system underneath all of them is Gridfinity. ## The 42mm accident The core idea of Gridfinity is a 42mm grid. That's it. Every bin is a multiple of 42mm. Every baseplate accepts every bin. A 1x1 from last year snaps into a 4x4 baseplate from tonight. The spec has never breaking-changed. Why 42? It was half-arbitrary, a compromise between 40mm and some imperial numbers that worked out close. That honesty matters. Previous standards tried to derive their unit from first principles. Gridfinity picked a number and shipped. ## Why previous systems died The graveyard of workshop-organization systems is instructive. Most failed one of three tests: they required a factory, they mandated a brand, or they fixed a resolution. Gridfinity passes all three. It prints at home. There's no brand. And because the grid is parametric, every object gets the bin it deserves. ## What comes next If you'd asked me in 2023, I would have said the next frontier was CAD. Gridfinity's biggest UX flaw was that you needed OpenSCAD or Fusion 360 to tweak anything. That's the gap we've been trying to close with Binforge. But honestly, even if we don't make it, someone will. The spec is open. The community is big. The tools will catch up. --- # Planning Your First Gridfinity Drawer **Luiz Tanure** | April 15, 2026 | 10 min read *The biggest waste of filament isn't a failed print. It's printing twelve bins and then discovering none of them fit the drawer you had in mind. Good planning takes twenty minutes. Bad planning costs a weekend.* ## Measure the interior, not the exterior Pull the drawer all the way out and measure the inside. Width, depth, height. Write them down. Use the interior walls as your boundary, not the outside of the casing. Drawers that look like they're 300mm wide are often 265mm inside once you account for the frame, the slides, and the stops. Use a ruler if that's what you have. Accuracy to 2mm is fine for planning. You're laying out a grid, not machining a part. If you have a digital caliper, zero it and measure twice. If you're using a tape measure, hook it on the back wall and read straight down. Also measure the interior height. Baseplate thickness plus bin height needs to clear the closed drawer. A standard Gridfinity baseplate is 4.75mm tall at the lowest point and up to 7mm with the full reinforced version. Add that to your tallest bin. If the drawer is 80mm deep internally, your bins need to be shorter than about 73mm to close cleanly. ## Fit the grid to the space Gridfinity bins are multiples of 42mm. That means your actual usable grid width is floor(interior width / 42). A 260mm wide drawer fits 6 columns of 42mm, using 252mm, with 8mm left over. That leftover goes to the front-to-back gap or gets absorbed by a slight offset from the wall. Don't try to eliminate the leftover gap by scaling bins. That breaks compatibility. Instead, position the baseplate so the gap sits at the back, where you won't see it or reach past it often. Alternatively, print a narrow filler strip to fill the remaining space. Many community baseplates have provisions for this. For depth, do the same calculation. A 320mm deep drawer gives you 7 rows (294mm) with 26mm remaining at the front. That front gap is useful: it gives your fingers clearance to lift bins out. Keep it. Binforge's layout planner handles this automatically. Enter your interior dimensions, and it calculates the maximum grid, shows the remaining gaps, and lets you drag bins into position before you print a single line of plastic. ## Start with your most-used items Before you open any slicer, make a list of what goes in the drawer. Be specific: not 'tools' but 'flathead screwdrivers (3), flush cutters (1), hex keys (9-piece set), wire strippers (1), spare blades.' Then group them by how often you reach for them. Daily-use items go in the front rows, within easy reach without pulling the drawer far out. Occasional-use items go in the middle. Rarely-used items go in the back. This sounds obvious but it changes the bin sizes you need. Daily items often warrant a deeper individual bin for each tool. Occasional items can share a wider, shallower bin. For each item, measure the object itself. Hex keys need a bin as deep as the longest key. Screwdrivers need a bin tall enough that the handle sticks up enough to grab. Marker pens that average 15mm in diameter need a bin at least 17mm across internally, with a little clearance. Binforge lets you type these dimensions directly and generates the right-sized bin. ## Common mistakes and how to avoid them The most common mistake is printing everything before verifying anything. Print one bin first. Drop it in the drawer. Confirm it sits flat, clears the drawer when closed, and holds the thing you made it for. Then print the rest. The second most common mistake is under-sizing bins. A bin just barely wide enough for an object is frustrating to use. Add 2mm to 3mm of clearance to each dimension. You want to drop things in one-handed, not thread them in. For oddly shaped objects like wire strippers with large handle curves, add 5mm. Over-sizing is less common but does happen. A 3x1 bin for a single AA battery is wasteful space. If items are small, group them in compartmentalized bins with dividers rather than giving each object its own unit cell. Finally, account for the baseplate. The baseplate takes up about 5mm to 7mm of your drawer height depending on the variant you choose. A flat baseplate is thin. The full Gridfinity spec baseplate with the reinforced corners is taller. Check which one you're printing, and check that height stacks fit. ## A workflow that works Here is the sequence that avoids most problems. First, measure and write down interior width, depth, and height. Second, calculate your grid: divide width and depth by 42 and take the floor. Third, list every item going in the drawer with a rough size estimate. Fourth, open Binforge and lay out the grid, placing bin footprints in order of daily use to occasional use. Fifth, generate and export each bin shape. Sixth, print one test bin and verify fit. Then print the rest. That's it. The whole process from blank drawer to organized drawer can happen in an afternoon. The planning step keeps you from reprinting the same bin three times. --- # Print Orientation, or: How to Stop Fighting Your Slicer **Luiz Tanure** | April 5, 2026 | 6 min read *Orientation is the single most impactful slicer setting for Gridfinity bins. Get it wrong and your walls snap. Get it right and the bin outlasts the printer that made it.* ## Why orientation matters more for bins than other prints FDM printing builds layer by layer. The bond between two layers is always the weakest point in the print. When you pick up a bin and drag it across a baseplate, you apply shear forces to those layer boundaries. When you press something into a bin, you apply compression perpendicular to the bed plane. The direction of your forces relative to the layer lines determines whether the bin holds or snaps. Gridfinity bins have thin walls, typically 1.2mm to 2mm on a standard print. A wall printed parallel to the bed, so that it builds up as a stack of horizontal rings, can handle being pressed from the outside. A wall printed flat on its side, building width rather than height, will delaminate under the same force because you're trying to pull the layers apart. ## The correct orientation for strength Print bins with the open top facing up and the Gridfinity base sitting on the print bed. This is the natural, upright orientation. In this position, the walls build as vertical cylinders of material, and the layer lines run horizontally around the perimeter. A sideways force on the wall is resisted by the wall's cross-section, not by the inter-layer bond. The Gridfinity base features, the rounded square profile and the magnetic catch geometry, print cleanly in this orientation with no supports needed. The overhangs on the base are gentle (typically 45 degrees or less) and most printers handle them with no intervention. Some people flip bins upside down to get a cleaner interior floor. This works, but it puts the Gridfinity base geometry at the top of the print where it requires supports. Unless your printer struggles with small overhangs on the underside, the upright orientation gives better results with less cleanup. ## When to use supports and when to skip them Standard bins with vertical walls and a flat floor need no supports when printed upright. The only Gridfinity geometry that sometimes needs support is the base lip on the underside, and only if your printer has poor bridging performance. Bins with cutouts through the floor, like the finger-access scoop or a hex-pattern floor, also print without supports in the upright orientation. The cutouts are in the floor of the bin, which prints as bridged spans over nothing. Most printers handle a 42mm bridge cleanly. Run a bridge test on your specific printer if you're unsure. The situations that genuinely need supports are uncommon: bins with a lid rail that overhangs severely, or custom parts with inverted geometry. If you find yourself adding supports to a standard Gridfinity bin, the orientation is probably wrong. Rotate to upright and the need for supports usually disappears. ## Wall line direction and what it means for surface quality In the upright orientation, your slicer prints the bin walls as concentric loops at each layer height. The perimeter lines run around the outside of the bin, giving the exterior a smooth finish. Interior surface quality depends on whether you set the slicer to print the outer perimeter first or last. For bins that hold small parts, the interior surface quality matters more than the exterior. Set your slicer to print outer walls first. This ensures the outermost line on each interior wall is printed against fresh air rather than against a previous line, which reduces ridges inside the bin. For wall count, 2 perimeters at 0.4mm line width gives you 0.8mm walls, which is the minimum for a functional bin. 3 perimeters at 0.4mm gives 1.2mm walls and is the sweet spot for most tools and hardware. Go to 4 perimeters for bins holding heavy items or anything you'll grip and pull firmly. Avoid single-perimeter walls on any Gridfinity part. They look fine until they don't.