The Universal Kitchen Rack, version 2

thingiverse

This is version 2 of The Universal Kitchen Rack. The original version can be found here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4901424 . While using threaded rods was an option for version 1, it is the default for version 2. This was done to make TUKR stronger and more resistant to fatigue failure. Many dimensions were changed to improve strength, so the version 1 files are NOT compatible with the version 2 files. The Universal Kitchen Rack (TUKR, “Tucker”) is a storage solution for organizing your pans, lids, plates, dishes, or other kitchen items. Unlike common retail pan racks, TUKR allows you to customize the spaces to fit your kitchen items and store them more securely. Plus it’s plastic, so it won’t scratch your stuff like metal racks can. TUKR can be assembled in a horizontal or vertical orientation. It consists of two main components: spacers and dividers. The spacer length is varied (by scaling the spacer stl length) to obtain the desired spacing between two dividers, and that space (calling this a “slot”), is what holds your kitchen item(s). There is a picture showing different spacer-divider orientation options and resulting slot widths. The dividers come in multiple styles and sizes for different size kitchen items. The dividers and spacers are joined together by M6 threaded rod and nuts. The divider stls are designed to be printable on a 170mm x 170mm bed. The face is 5mm thick, and the spacer boss is 5mm, making them 10mm tall. The hole size is 6mm for M6 threaded rod. TUKR is designed to be easy to scale. If the rack needs to be larger, scale up equally in X and Y. For example, if you want to use ¼ inch threaded rod instead of M6 threaded rod, scale the spacer and divider up in X and Y by 1.0583. This will make the hole ¼” diameter, and the resulting dividers will be printable on a 180mm x 180mm bed. You may need to adjust the scale factor slightly for your printer’s tolerances, e.g. for ¼” threaded rod, use a factor of 1.06 if your printer undersizes small holes by about 0.4mm. If your dividers need to be stronger, scale up in Z; for heavy pans, I suggest scaling Z by 2. The default spacer length is 100mm, so just scale the spacer in Z by the mm you want. The hex nut caps should be scaled to the size of the hex nuts you use. Horizontal TUKR Instructions: --------------------------------------- 1. This rack has the dividers stacked horizontally, so the items stand up. This rack is good for storing pans, plates, etc. up to about 215mm in diameter for the default size, but TUKR is scalable, as mentioned above. 2. Determine the number of slots you want in your rack. If you want one slot for each item, like for pans, then number of slots=number of items. If you want to store multiple items per slot, maybe for plates, then figure out how many slots you need based on the number of plates and number of plates per slot. 3. Determine the width of each slot, which will be the width of the item(s) you wish to store in that slot. Write these widths down. 4. The total length of TUKR will be (the sum of the slot widths) + (number of slots+1)*(divider thickness = 10mm by default). Make sure the rack will fit where you want it to go before proceeding. 5. Add 2*width of your hex nuts to the total length from the previous step. Cut two pieces of threaded rod this long. 6. Print: (number of slots + 1) “style#_H_divider.stl” parts. I suggest printing them in the uploaded orientation with a high enough temperature to ensure good layer adhesion. 7. Print: two spacers for each rack slot. The spacer is a simple cylinder 100mm long, making it easy to scale. The length of the spacers depends on divider orientation, refer to the spacer-divider options picture. I suggest printing the spacers vertically with a high enough temperature to ensure good layer adhesion. 8. Optional Print: four “hex_cap.stl”. These cover the hex nuts to give the rack a more finished look. I included M6 and ¼ inch versions. 9. Assemble TUKR by screwing a nut on the end of each threaded rod, then slide the dividers and spacers onto the threaded rods. Screwing a nut on the end of each threaded rod and tighten them, but not enough to crack the plastic. Put the caps on the nuts if you printed those. Vertical TUKR Instructions: ----------------------------------- 1. This rack has the dividers stacked vertically, so the items lay on the dividers. First, determine the style of vertical rack you want. There are two three-post (a “post” is a vertical column of spacer cylinders) styles, one with posts 90 degrees apart (“V3P90”) that can hold items up to 210mm in diameter and one with posts spaced evenly 120 degrees apart (“V3P120”) that can hold items up to 160mm in diameter. There’s also a four-post style (“V4P”) that can hold items up to 145mm in diameter. TUKR is scalable, as mentioned above. Different divider styles can be mixed-and-matched as long as they have the same post style, e.g. “V3P90”. 2. A two-post vertical rack is not recommended because the weight of the items in that slot would be applying a cantilevered load on the divider, which could cause it to break. If you need a two-post vertical rack, and the items being stored in the rack are very lightweight, a horizontal TUKR could be turned on its side get a two-post vertical TUKR. 3. Determine the height of each slot, which will be the height of the stacked item(s) you wish to store in that slot. Write these heights down. 4. The total height of TUKR will be (the sum of the slot heights) + (number of slots+1)* (divider thickness = 10mm by default). Make sure the rack will fit where you want it to go before proceeding. 5. Add 2*width of your hex nuts to the total height from the previous step. Cut three or four (depending on style) pieces of threaded rod this long. 6. Print: (number of slots + 1) “style#_VXXX_divider.stl” parts. I suggest printing them in the uploaded orientation with a high enough temperature to ensure good layer adhesion. 7. If you have three posts, print three spacers for each rack slot. If you have four posts, print four spacers for each rack slot. The spacer is a simple cylinder 100mm long, making it easy to scale. The length of the spacers depends on divider orientation, refer to the spacer-divider options picture. I suggest printing the spacers vertically with a high enough temperature to ensure good layer adhesion. 8. Optional Print: 6 or 8 (depending on style) “hex_cap.stl”. These cover the hex nuts to give the rack a more finished look. I included M6 and ¼ inch versions. 9. Assemble TUKR by screwing a nut on the end of each threaded rod, then slide the dividers and spacers onto the threaded rods. Screwing a nut on the end of each threaded rod and tighten them, but not enough to crack the plastic. Put the caps on the nuts if you printed those. The following divider styles are available for the horizontal TUKR: --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- * style0: Blank. This is so you can make your own divider. If there’s a flat-ish STL model that you like, you can load both this and that stl into Cura, scale and move them around as needed, and slice: Cura automatically joins models where they overlap. There’s also an insert plate that fits inside style0, which allows you to make inserts like style6. * style1: Curvy V * style2: “PUBG Arsenal”. PlayerUnknown’s BattleGround arsenal for your most important weapon: the frying pan. You can mirror this in your slicer if you need the text to face the other direction, just play with mirroring until it looks like you want it. If you don’t like the little letter connector tabs, you can load this and the style0_H_divider_insert_plate.stl into Cura, scale the style0_H_divider_insert_plate.stl by 200% in Z (to make it 2mm thick), and overlap them to make the letters embossed. * style3: Peace Sign * style4: Deathly Hallows * style5: Leaf * style6: Tree. This insert fits inside style0 and should be glued in place. It’s printed separately to allow you to insert it facing either direction without having to use supports. I downloaded the tree stl from thingiverse (can’t find the model, will update with credit to user if I can find it) and merged it with the style0_H_divider_insert_plate.stl in Cura. The following divider styles are available for the 3-post 90deg vertical TUKR: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- * style0: Blank. See comments in horizontal styles above. * style1: Curvy V * style3: Peace Sign * style4: Deathly Hallows * style5: Leaf The following divider styles are available for the 3-post 120deg vertical TUKR: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- * style0: Blank. See comments in horizontal styles above. * style1: Cross * style2: Radiation. In fact, most triangular hazard signs would work well with this divider. * style3: Peace Sign * style4: Deathly Hallows The following divider styles are available for the 4-post vertical TUKR: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- * style0: Blank. See comments in horizontal styles above. * style1: Cross * style2: “PUBG Arsenal”. See comments in horizontal styles above. I also include a PUBG insert plate, which has the letters debossed instead of embossed. * style3: Peace Sign * style4: Deathly Hallows * style5: Leaf Other divider ideas (not made yet): ---------------------------------------------- * Letters, see style2 PUBG examples for letter connections, debossing, and embossing. * Animals * Sports Teams * Other leaves * Car brand logos * Hazard symbols * Your own? Make a remix and post your divider designs. Large Divider Option: ----------------------------- If you don’t have a larger printer and would like TUKR to have larger dividers so you can store larger items, you can use sheet metal (aluminum or stainless steel) or sheet plastic (acrylic, polycarbonate, etc.) to obtain any size you desire. For a horizontal TUKR, all you have to do is substitute each “_H_divider.stl” in the above instructions with two “sheet_Xmm_divider.stl” and two “sheet_divider_H_foot.stl” parts. The foot can be printed separately and glued on, or arranged with a slight overlap with the “sheet_Xmm_divider.stl” part in Cura so they’ll be printed as one part. The foot can be also be scaled (in Y in uploaded configuration) to make the height of the horizontal rack taller. For the vertical TUKR, substitute each “_VXXX_divider.stl” with three or four (depending on desired number of posts) “sheet_Xmm_divider.stl” parts. These dividers are printed in a different orientation to prevent the need for supports inside the sheet slot feature. Select the stl appropriate for the material sheet thickness (Xmm) you will use; available options are: 1.5mm (close to 1/16”), 2mm, 3mm (close to 1/8”), 5mm (close to 3/16”), 6mm (close to 1/4”). You will need to scale these a little in thickness to obtain a snug fit on your particular sheet material. Since the size of the sheet determines the size of the rack, there’s no need to do any other scaling (unless you’re going REALLY big). The shape of the sheets doesn’t particularly matter: round discs, squares, rectangles, custom milled or laser cut patterns should all work, but it needs to be thick enough to not deflect much. Squares and discs in various sizes and materials are readily available on Amazon, eBay, and many other online retailers. The “_hole.stl” versions of these have a single countersunk hole and hexahedron cut for a flat head M3 screw + hex nut located 6mm x 6mm from the closest corner. There are a couple uploaded pictures of example assemblies. A Comment on Strength: -------------------------------- Version 1 used plastic pegs instead of threaded rods. Version 1 was tested for strength and impact and passed, but it ended up having poor fatigue resistance. Thus, version 2 uses metal threaded rods to join the dividers and spacers, which should solve the fatigue problem while making the racks stronger. I still suggest scaling up dividers in Z (thickness) for slots holding heavy pans. Basic default dimensions: ---------------------------------- * Spacer OD x ID x length: 12mm x 6mm x 100mm * Divider (unscaled) minimum bed size: 170mm x 170mm * Divider plate thickness: 5mm * Divider spacer boss diameter x thickness: 12mm x 5mm, so the dividers are 5+5=10mm thick at the spacer bosses. * Divider threaded rod hole diameter: 6mm * Center-center spacing between threaded rod holes for the H_dividers, V3P90_dividers, and V4P_dividers: 158mm Final notes: ---------------- Feel free to remix this, especially if you have new divider designs. I’d love to see a large user base of divider designs. If you find any mistakes or omissions, please leave a comment, and I’ll try to get it fixed ASAP. This took quite a few hours to design and test, so if you feel like it, please leave me a tip so I’ll be motivated to design and post more things. Disclaimer: I am not responsible for any injury or broken items. Build and use this rack at your own risk.