Tag Archives: 3D printing

Spice racks and drawer organizers

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Early May, 2026

I’ve been continuing my 3D printing kick – taking on odd projects from friends and neighbors partially to cover the cost of materials, but mainly to give myself some interesting design challenges to face and overcome.

These last ones were a spice rack (easy) and a drawer organizer (surprisingly hard).

See… the spice rack is simple. I’ve got the designs down solid, and all they need at this point is for me to adjust the basic dimensions to match those of the specific kitchen where they’re being installed. Simple and easy; update a few numbers, print it out, and then do a quick assembly.

The drawer organizer, though? That was unique. It’d have been easy as anything if it was a single-setup organizer, but the neighbor in question wasn’t quite sure how she wanted to arrange it… instead of asking her for a single firm design, I took that as a fun confounding variable: Can I make a drawer organizer that’s fully adaptable?

Yes, in fact, I could.

It took a while for me to brainstorm the idea – see, I needed it to be modular, in single segment intervals. They had to be sturdy, but orientable in two dimensions. Simply doing LEGO-style walls would have been simple, but they wouldn’t have been resilient enough; they’d just fall over.

In the end, I decided on a grid, with anchor posts on each side that’re designed so that up to four walls can “radiate” outward from a center hub… while not requiring any walls to even exist for stability.

It worked beautifully, in the end, and only took a little bit of trial and error to dial in the specific sizing to allow for full modularity. Fun and challenging.

Another spice rack

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May, 2026


I adore being an engineer.

I can’t express how much I appreciate it when a friend brings me a challenge, and then I get to drive ahead and build something beautiful to solve that challenge.

In this case, it was a spice rack – but a new design, this time to optimize space unique to the format of apartment that he (and I) have. In short, there’s a really cool slatted wall in the kitchen – I use it to store plants and little memorabilia, but our friend had the good idea that this could, instead, be leveraged into a bit of a space to store spices.

Utilizing otherwise lost space… Now that sounds like an engineer’s dream, doesn’t it?

Well. I measured, I designed, and I tested. I overengineered at first, then simplified and optimized.

I printed, then I iterated and printed again. Have I mentioned that I adore having my own 3D printer? I do – it doesn’t run 24/7, not even remotely, but it does run when it’s needed, and it helps immeasurably when it does.

How’d the new rack come out?

WELL. It fit BEAUTIFULLY, so much so that I took some of the prototypes and re-formed them into one for Andrea and I, to hold our coffee and teas.

Spice Rack 3.0

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Friday, 19-Dec-2025

I’ve been designing more fixtures and tools!

In this case, a neighbor of ours had asked after a new spice rack – I’d shared the design and photos of the rack I’d made for our own kitchen, and was thrilled to have the chance to revise the designs and try out a few new tricks. Expanded alignment pins, clips to help secure the arms, that sort of thing.

So… I did! It went great!

That’s… that’s kind of the whole story. Simple, fun, and a great opportunity to do some more work in Solidworks.