Free Drawer Insert Generator
Free drawer insert generator. Fill any drawer with cutlery, knife, pocket, cradle and grid bays, split into dovetailed pieces. Order it printed in NZ.
What It Does
Shop-bought drawer organisers fit the drawer they were designed for and no other, which is why every kitchen has one rattling about with a hand's width of dead space beside it. This generator builds an insert to your drawer's own internal size, filled with the compartments you actually need, and then splits it into pieces small enough to print and lock back together. It runs live in your browser and nothing is uploaded. Designing is free; we print the pieces and courier them anywhere in New Zealand.
Measuring The Drawer
Measure at the base of the drawer rather than the rim, since many drawers taper and a few have a lip. The side clearance figure is the total, split between both sides, so the insert drops in without having to be persuaded. Give it the internal height as well as the insert height you want: the insert does not have to reach the top, and a lower insert is easier to reach into, but the tool needs to know the drawer's height to tell you when a bay is deeper than the drawer allows.
The Bay Library
Cutlery slots for forks and spoons, knife wedges that hold blades edge-down and safe, open bins, sloped bins that tip their contents towards you, round pockets for jars and spice tins, vee cradles for bottles and rolling stock, battery rails, grid cells, stepped tiers for small parts, and peg fields for holding plates and bowls upright. Any bay can carry a finger scoop, which is the difference between lifting a small item out and chasing it round the compartment. The auto fill presets lay a whole drawer out in one go for cutlery, baking, office and workshop use, and are meant as a starting point to adjust rather than an answer.
Bands And Shares
The layout is a stack of bands across the depth of the drawer, each holding a row of bays across its width. Bands and bays are sized by share rather than by millimetres, so changing the drawer size or adding a bay re-proportions everything instead of breaking the layout. The plan view alongside shows the result to scale and names each piece, so it is obvious which piece is which before anything is made.
Splitting Into Pieces
Most useful drawers are larger than any printer bed, so an insert of any size is normally several pieces. The tool splits it for you, preferring to land the split on a wall between bays where the joint is least visible and least in the way. The largest piece setting is in our own terms rather than a printer to choose: one option fits every material we print, the larger one applies to PLA, PETG and TPU, which is where our biggest machines are. Pick the larger footprint and you get fewer joints, at the cost of restricting the materials the part can be made in.
Dovetails, Not Glue
The pieces meet on dovetail tabs cut into the floor: the tip of each tab is wider than its root, so once the pieces are slid together they cannot pull apart in the plane of the drawer, and the drawer itself holds them down. The tabs print flat with no supports. Fit clearance is the one number to adjust if the joints are tight or loose; the bands simply butt against one another, so nothing needs gluing.