Hex Key Rack

This is a simple rack for holding hex keys. My aim was to hold my set of Eklind T-Handle hex-keys (which didn't come with any storage case or similar) in a location that was readily accessible at all times. I recently bought a job-lot of acrylic sheet in various colours and sizes on ebay. At my work there is a laser cutter, which is available for personal use (with your own material, obviously) and I used this to make this simple stand.

It's mostly made out of 3 mm and 5 mm sheet (the variation in sheet thickness was due to what I had available in the same colour from the batch I bought on ebay). The back piece has four holes near the corners and self-tapping screws hold this to the panel on the lathe. The various panels are held together with solvent cement (usually used for fixing solvent weld waste pipes together). The castellated joints were modelled in Onshape (which is free for personal use) using their FeatureScript programming language.

As this photo shows, the cut-outs for the hex keys are hexagonal (rather than the more normal approach of using a round hole in a piece of bent metal). The advantage of laser-cutting is that it's easy to make hole shapes that aren't round and this means all the hex keys stay tidily in line and I don't get the problem of the larger hex keys spinning round and preventing access to the smaller ones.


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