I was really impressed with how nice the Milwaukee Packout labels came out. (Sometimes a little thing can make your whole day.)
I decided to make more. This time I made “handles” for Packout boxes with pull out drawers. These come in various flavors; 2, 3, or 4 drawers and even some with unequal drawers. All I own are modules with 3 identical drawers. They look like this:
I grabbed a model from MakerWorld and jammed out several handles.
Time for a nerd note. I didn’t make the model myself. Someone named “marioalvarez.214t” posted it as “Packout Drawer handle”. Whomever that is did all the brain work and deserves accolades, not me. However it’s licensed under “Creative Commons License”. There are several flavors of the license and the creator chose one which allows me to make as many copies as I want, modify as I see fit, and even sell them*. I hope this post acknowledges the author adequately, I’m not trying to screw anyone. I encourage anyone who wants to go search the model up on MakerWorld and get the data “from the horses mouth”**.
*Now there’s an idea! Anyone who wants to buy a handle or three, shoot me an email.
**Do people say “from the horses mouth” anymore? It’s meant as a compliment and attestation of veracity but I live under a rock so what do I know?
I made up four of them (inserting my own text and whatnot). I printed with cheap red PLA with cheap black PLA letters. PLA is not particularly awesome or exotic but I suspect it’s plenty good enough and if I need to reprint with better materials it won’t be a big deal. The print plate looked like this:
It takes a little practice to get the old black plastic handles off. I had to resort to watching a YouTube video (how embarrassing!) Once I got the hang of it, I could tear off the old handle in maybe 90 seconds with minimal swearing. Should you try the same thing you’ll figure it out by the second handle.
Here’s a comparison of the new handle (fresh off my printer) and the old handle (pried out of a two year old Packout).
Tearing out the old handle is a fairly brutal operation, but you can insert the new handle nice and easy with a C-clamp.
The end result looks so damn clean!
BTW: I seriously considered making a set of “wiseass” handles. I like the idea of a workshop where the drawers are labeled “skulls of my enemies”, “cans of whoop ass”, and “last fucks to give”. However, my workspaces are plenty chaotic enough without a layer of sarcasm muddying things up. Shame, because it would be hilarious.