It’s such a nice project. But boy do I think it would benefit from mass production. People spend a lot of time printing generic bins and baseplates that would be better spent just printing custom bins.
3D printing with a modern printer is set and forget. You send the print file to the printer and you go get it a couple hours later.
Still faster than waiting for a package from Amazon and lower resource usage than driving to the store.
The customization comes everywhere from picking the bin you want to selecting the color filament to match your layout. Gridfinity isn’t my thing but people who are into it are usually customizing something, from the color to the baseplate.
However, for initial setup of the system (e.g. filling up multiple drawers with baseplates and basic bins, as you will see in many videos online), it would definitely jump start the process a lot, where you'll otherwise spend weeks printing everything. Additionally, if you also go for the fancier baseplates/bins that include the magnets you'll also spend quite a bit of time on assembly and will require external hardware anyways.
I personally didn't think it was a big deal as for me adopting the system incrementally over time worked quite well, but I think there definitely is a niche of people (and possibly businesses) that would like to adopt Gridfinity for its other benefits and appreciate faster initial setup time.
https://gridfinity.perplexinglabs.com/
Ironically printing custom pelican inserts with this right now
You wouldn't download "Hello world"?
Consumer-grade containers would be cheaper than 3d printing if buying a set, it'd get folk up-and-running without fuss, and when they wanted to customize it they could do so with the help of any of their 3d printing fanatic buddies.
So yeah. I agree with @stephenpetryk. Storage solution companies should start marking their bins as Gridfinity-compatible (which is a protected use of copyright regardless of whether "Gridfinity" is copyrighted).
The cool things about gridfinity is not just the custom pieces, but also the exact fit that can be achieved. Since every drawer seems to be a slightly different size, exact fits with basic bins would never quite be achieved without targeting a specific drawer.
Also, I've turned down the fill and structural strength a lot without issues for most things. How strong does a bin for cotton swabs need to be?
Let people make some money while everyone is saving money.
Basically, it seems like the inventor purports to be licensing the kinds of exclusive rights to their invention that a patent would grant them, but without actually meeting the legal requirements for receiving a patent.
(I don't know of any other jurisdiction that would give them a cause of action either, but law is diverse enough, and many governments are corrupt enough, that I'm sure there's somewhere in the world they could win a lawsuit.)
Maybe some actual lawyers could chime in on this.
https://x.com/zackfreedman/status/1650629770156326912#m
or for those allergic to X:
https://lightbrd.com/zackfreedman/status/1650629770156326912...
> Let people make some money
Why would people who did nothing to invent and develop the system would get the money and not the creators ?