165.705 mm
cell pitch, center to center
- License
- CC BY 4.0
- Release
- 2026-10-31
- Material
- PETG
- Bed
- ≥ 220 × 220 × 241 mm
Every base carries a dovetail on all six edges, so a layout of any size locks together and moves as one piece.
▸ What it is
Hex Cluster is a mounting standard for the bench. The unit is a hexagonal base, 80 mm tall, that locks to its neighbors on all six edges. Covers, caps, mounts and accessories fix to that grid, and the grid carries the load between them.
You print every part on your own machine. Plan a layout in the configurator, download the plates, and add to it one cell at a time.
▸ Start small
Print the tolerance ladder and the dovetail gauge first (they are below, under print these first). Then print two hex-main bases and slide one onto the other along a single joint. That joint is the whole system at its smallest: pull on it, check the fit, and build out from there.
13 h 14 min
print time
511 g
filament
0.51
1 kg spools
2 × hex-main. K2 Plus reference, supports excluded, slower printers up to ~4×.
▸ Geometry
- Cell pitch
- 165.705 mmcenter to center
- Footprint width
- 169.21 mm
- Corner to corner
- 190.76 mm
- Base height
- 80 mm
- Joint clearance
- 0.25 mm
The pitch follows from the base. Two neighbors each reach 86.603 mm from their center to the shared edge, and their dovetails overlap by twice the 4 mm joint depth less twice the 0.25 mm clearance, which leaves 165.705 mm. Design to the pitch if you are adapting the standard.
▸ Dovetails
- Male edges
- 30 / 150 / 270°NE, NW, S
- Female edges
- 90 / 210 / 330°N, SW, SE
Bearings are measured counter-clockwise from east. Male and female alternate around the hexagon, and every edge sits opposite one of the other gender, so any base meets any neighbor male to female. One base design tiles in every direction.
▸ Halves and quarters
A cell holds one hex-main, two halves, four quarters, or any mix that covers the cell’s four quadrants once. The halves are hex-half-n, -s, -e and -w; the quarters are hex-quarter-nw, -ne, -sw and -se. Use them to end a layout on a straight edge.
All four quarters differ. The dovetail pattern repeats three times around the hexagon and the quarter cut four times, so no quarter is a turned copy of another, and each has its own file.
▸ Caps
A cap closes a dovetail with no neighbor on it, so an outside edge shows a finished face. edge caps cover one flat of a full base. cut-ns and cut-ew each cover the long cut side of a half: cut-ns for an east or west half, cut-ew for a north or south one.
Each comes solid, or 1h with the base’s side hole carried through it. The last letter is the face the cap presents: a cap on a male edge is an -f, and on a female edge an -m.
▸ Print profile
- Material
- PETG
- Nozzle diameter
- 0.4 mm0.6 also works
- Layer height
- 0.20 mm0.30 on a 0.6 nozzle
- Walls
- 4
- Infill
- 30% adaptive cubic
- Bed
- 220 × 220 × 241 mmor larger
The part that reaches furthest across the bed, hex-jig-tolerance-ladder, is 210.00 × 17.00 mm, and the tallest, hex-bin-full-div2-x3 and the other three-story parts, stand 240.12 mm. So the release needs a bed of at least 220 × 220 mm that builds 241 mm tall; a 180 mm bed such as the Prusa Mini will not take it. A pack download shares a plate between parts that fit together.
▸ Slicers
The 3MF files open in Creality Print, OrcaSlicer, PrusaSlicer and Cura. Cura has no per-object brim: its brim setting applies to the whole plate.
▸ Time and filament, per part
- hex-main
- 6 h 37 min255 g
- hex-half-n
- 5 h 18 min220 g
- hex-main-cover
- 1 h 16 min61 g
- hex-cap-edge-solid-m
- 36 min28 g
K2 Plus reference, supports excluded, slower printers up to ~4×. Grams are PETG at 1.27 g/cm³ and vary by about 3% between brands.
▸ Pipe
3/4 in Sch 40, OD 26.67 mm (US). Metric 25/32 mm pipe does not fit.
▸ Tools
- Calipers, to read the tolerance ladder
- Flush cutters and a deburring blade, for brims
- A 5 mm hex key, for the M6 side bolts
- 5 × 1 mm neodymium magnets for the covers that take them, and a 4.5 mm steel BB in the base under each one
- A soldering iron with a heat-set tip, for the inserts and the steel BBs
- A PVC pipe cutter, primer and solvent cement, for pipe runs
▸ Print these first
Small prints that tell you how your printer lands on this system before you spend hours on a base.
- 3MFTolerance ladderhex-jig-tolerance-ladder
Reading Seven rungs of dovetail clearance in one print, each with a bolt hole stepped by the same index.
Action Find the rung your dovetail slides into cleanly. Read the bolt fit off the same rung.
- 3MFDovetail gaugehex-jig-dovetail-gauge
Reading GO on one face and NO-GO on the other. A correct tab enters GO; a tab that also enters NO-GO is undersize.
Action Slide it down one printed flat before you commit a batch, and again after any change of filament, profile or nozzle.
- 3MFGrate sample tilehex-jig-grate-sample
Reading Every cover hole pattern side by side, each at its real size.
Action Choose a cover pattern by holding it. If your printer renders these cleanly, it will render a cover cleanly.
- 3MFDrill guidehex-jig-drill-guide
Reading Drops onto any perimeter flat, locates on the side port and presents the four bolt holes as bushings.
Action Drill through it to add the bolt pattern to a base printed without it. It drills the through hole only.
▸ Safety
- Designed and tested for PETG only; other materials are untested.
- PETG softens around 70 °C. Keep parts out of heat and direct sun.
- Not load-rated. Do not hang or support anything whose failure could hurt someone.
- Magnets: keep away from children; swallowed magnets are dangerous.
- Heat-set inserts are installed hot.
- Use PVC primer and cement with ventilation, per their labels.
- Printed parts are not for drinking water unless every wetted part is NSF/ANSI 61 certified and lead-free, with backflow prevention.
▸ Release notes
- Release
- 2026-10-31
- Parts
- 935
- Earlier v2 release
- 2026-10-01, 2026-10-10, 2026-10-12, 2026-10-14
- Mates with earlier v2 prints
- Yessame joint
2026-10-31: The spool axle: a printed rod that spans a bay between two facing rod sockets and carries a 1 kg filament spool. Changed parts you may already have printed:
- hex-drawer-frame-bay-n and hex-drawer-frame-bay-s, at one and two stories, have a 45° flat at the back corners of the drawer seat. It fixes a defect in the published files (open mesh edges that some slicers flag); the drawer runs in it as before, so reprint one only if your slicer complained.
2026-10-14: Notch and bay parts: bins and drawers that stand in the open site between cells, 226 new parts. Changed parts you may already have printed:
- hex-drawer-body-n and hex-drawer-body-s, at one to three stories, now come down beside the runners with a crenellated floor, so they hold 30 to 37 ml more. They run in the same frames on the same runners: reprint one only if you want the room.
2026-10-12: Nine parts no longer need supports. Changed parts you may already have printed:
- hex-half-w, hex-quarter-nw and hex-quarter-sw, at one to three stories, have a 45° fill under the ledge inside the cut wall, so they print with no supports. They fit exactly as before: no need to reprint them.
2026-10-10: Drawers at one to three stories, tall bases, bins and bolt-on bins, the socket cover and socket edge caps, and more. Changed parts you may already have printed:
- hex-half-w now sinks its nuts into its wall, so a bolt-on still reaches one with a bin in it. Reprint it if you bolt to a binned west half.
- The female edge caps are beveled at the foot to clear a bin rim in the cell below. Reprint them if a cap sits over a bin.
▸ License and attribution
The geometry is released under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). You may share it and adapt it, for any purpose, including commercially. Attribution is the one condition, and it is why the files are free.
The configurator is free to use in your browser with no account, and its software is not open source. The Hex Cluster parts it places and the prop models we publish are CC BY 4.0, so you can print, change and sell what you build with them as long as you credit One Thousand Drones, LLC.
Crediting it means three things:
- Credit One Thousand Drones, LLC.
- Link the license.
- Say whether you changed anything.
You can do that however suits your platform. This line is ready to paste:
Hex Cluster by One Thousand Drones, LLC, licensed CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). If you changed the files, say so, and say what you changed. Source: https://academy.onethousanddrones.com/hex
If you arrived from a LICENSE.txt inside a downloaded file, this page is the source URL it cites. The full legal text is at creativecommons.org. CC BY runs one way: files already published under it stay under it, and only a future release could carry different terms.
▸ Support
Questions about a print or a fit go to hex@onethousanddrones.com. We aim to reply within 72 hours.
Scripting the configurator? Its browser API is documented at /hex/api.
▸ Accessibility
This statement covers what in Hex Cluster works from a keyboard today, and where it falls short.
What works. The /hex page, the downloads, the build sheet and the saved-build pages are ordinary web pages you can use from a keyboard, with their text in the page. In the configurator, the menus and buttons can be reached with Tab, the build sheet opens with Enter and closes with Escape, the keys [ and ] cycle the part families, status messages are written to live regions that screen readers can announce, and animation is reduced when your system asks for reduced motion.
What does not, yet. Placing and moving parts in the 3D view needs a mouse, trackpad or touch screen. There is no keyboard way to place a part today. It is on our list, and we have not set a date. The 3D view is a picture a screen reader cannot describe; the build sheet lists every part in text.
Tell us. If something blocks you, email hex@onethousanddrones.com with what you were trying to do. We aim to reply within 72 hours, and we can send the parts list or files for a build you describe.
We aim for WCAG 2.2 level AA on the web pages. This statement was written on 28 September 2026, by us, without an outside audit.