Horrible toolholder

[Amit_Kohli]

Last week I also made this toolholder for the tools of my mini CNC router.

8mm ply, lasercut. The “sky” thing underneath is a leftover cut from the mandala I did before.

I hate it. Reflections follow:

• I really don’t need to have EVERY SINGLE BIT that I own out on display. If I’m not cutting anything, then why do I need to have things out?
• I particularly don’t need to have ALL the 3 mm ball-nose bits that I own out. It would be cool to distinguish which one is half-used, but other than that, the rest can be put away.
• I do like the collet-holder system… the way I had it before was in individual boxes and that was faffy.
• I love that I made a hole for the little USB converter that holds the micro-SD card if I want to use the offline controller. It makes me gigle
• I don’t love the wrench-holders. I made them somehow too big even tho I allowed for the same tolerance over my caliper-measured dimensions as the rest… not sure why they are so loose. Also… even tho the 8mm is pretty deep, the wrenches have a rounded end that’s just about 6-7mm… so it doesn’t “fit snug” if you know what I mean?
• I like how I offsetted the large v-carve bits… I think that came out cool.
• Using the mandala underneath was cool in principle, but is horrible in practice… it doesn’t fit snuggly against anything now. It just makes my office look cluttered which I hate. Then again, having the bits out reminds me that I have got to do something again… but yeah. Kind of a stupid way I think.
• Oh yeah, I burned the crap out of the back of the material for using waaaay too slow a speed… for which @Julia scolded me . Oh well. All will be sorted when we have canonical settings for the ply materials in the shop.

Yeah… all in all, pretty terrible. BUT, it was the first thing that I cut in the laser that I designed from top to bottom, so little victories right?

(meta-note: I’m not a negative person… but I do think it’s important to reflect when things go badly, and might as well do it publicly so someone can avoid my boneheaded mistakes!)

[Diego_Luiz]

That’s a nice holder! I love organisers and this looks very tight.

My concern would be that this is super dangerous, at least for me
It makes me uncomfortable this amount of sharp tools pointing up

But it does look good!

[Amit_Kohli]

Thanks for your feedback! The sharpness was one of the concerns. The really dangerous ones are the v-carve 20degrees… those poke my finger so often! I thought I would mitigate that risk by putting them in the middle, between the other longer bits so that it’s really hard to poke me accidentally. But the bigger vcarve bits aren’t super-safe either… to your “point.”

I think this has to be a box. ONLY holding one of each bit type. It should also hold the offline controller, which now has no home. The wrenches need another solution… maybe some magnets and then a holder right on the CNC so that they have a permanent home and that keeps my profile low.

[Diego_Luiz]

No problem!

Not only the v-carve, I think anything point up, even if it’s slightly blunt, is enough to cause a lot of damage…

I’d rather have them side ways or, as you said, to be a kind of a box. If you get some acrylic box to put on top of it, it should be enough (maybe you will just need to remove that spanner as it’s too tall)
Something like this: https://www.retailacrylics.co.uk/15cm-x-30cm---clear-acrylic-display-box-113-p.asp

[Ryanf (Ryan)]

I think anything that organisers bits and pieces is never horrible, it serves a very practical purpose. On your point of a box, what about a box that has the bits on a sort of stepped system that pop up, similar to the attached toolbox? Small box, but opens up and everything becomes safely accessible. Just a thought.

[Brendon_Hatcher]

You could adopt/adapt this: https://cartonus.com/jewelry-box/

[Brendon_Hatcher]

I love your reflections on what was done and could be done better.
Reminds me of Adam Savage’s Youtube videos.

[Kyle (Kyle Barker)]

I think keeping cutters from hitting and dulling each other is important. Vertical is often chosen as there’s not as much variation in cutter length. Another option is individual trays to hold each bit horizontally but that works better with end mills than v bits.

Adding sides would reduce risk while moving around or if you trip but I think having the tray removable is much safer for actually grabbing bits. Grabbing bits from the side rather than the top.

All in all, I think it came out great! I see you’ve come around on the wrenches Having a rougher and a finisher/spare of each out is great. Maybe not a million of each Having stuff labeled and easy to grab is awesome!