3D-printed joints

A lot of people who join the DIY movement quickly realize they simply don’t have the skills and equipment (not to mention time) required to make things that look as good and last as long as those built by experts. But you don’t have to be an engineer, designer or carpenter to build furniture that meets your exact specifications and fits together perfectly. These kits of 3D-printed joints make it easy to create you own custom projects, and this set can actually be printed at home on a desktop 3D printer.

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Print to Build is a joint collection for ‘variable space structures’ by designer Ollé Gellért. Download the STL files to print the plastic joints and then you can use them with the materials of your choice without the need for special tools. The set includes 90, 45 and 120-degree angles with slots for 8-millimeter plywood sheets, and no other fasteners are required.

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That makes the possibilities for furniture configurations practically endless, enabling shelves with custom-shaped openings for specific objects, or the creation of furniture to fit unusually-shaped rooms. The locally-obtained plywood pieces (or potentially other flat 8-mm surfaces, like plastic) could be painted or stained however you like.

patch proejct

Another set of joints for custom furniture making takes a less complex approach to fasten narrow strips of lumber. ‘Patch Project’ looks like a bunch of red bandages and requires screws to securely hold it all together. “Chaos is incorporated into their design, so you can spontaneously form constructions where the technical component is also a decorative one.”

About Print to Build Designer Gellért Ollé:

“I am from Hungary, Budapest. I have finished my basic studies at the West Hungarian University’s Applied Arts Institute as a product designer. I finished the product design master at the Moholy-Nagy Universitiy of Arts and Design in 2019. Right now I am working for the Joris Laarman Studio in Amsterdam.”