76.20 mm
cell pitch, centre to centre
- License
- CC BY 4.0
- Release
- 2026-07-31
- Parts
- 53
- Material
- PETG
Hex Cluster
A printable mounting standard. Dovetails on all six edges, so a tiled layout behaves as one rigid body.
▸ What it is
Hex Cluster is a mounting standard, not a storage system. Each tile is a hexagonal base carrying a tapered dovetail on every one of its six edges. Engage two tiles and the joint resists in-plane pull, so a layout of any size behaves as a single rigid body rather than a set of pieces that creep apart under a tugged cable.
Carrier inserts drop into a tile to hold a board or a tray. Caps close the free male and female dovetails around the perimeter, so a finished cluster has no exposed joint. Half tiles let a layout end on a straight edge instead of a saw-tooth.
▸ Geometry
0.25 mm
design gap between tiles
The pitch beside this is the hex across-flats dimension plus that gap: a 43.85 mm circumradius gives 75.95 mm across flats, and the 0.25 mm clearance takes it to 76.20 mm, which is 3.00 in. Design to the pitch if you are adapting the standard; design to the gap if you are printing it.
▸ Print spec
Orientation
hex-face-down
The only symmetric orientation across all six dovetails. Pull-apart force loads interlayer bonds, the weak FDM axis; PETG layer adhesion compensates.
- Material
- FDM PETG
- Nozzle
- 240 °C
- Bed
- 70–85 °Cbrand-dependent
- Layer
- 0.20 mm
- Perimeters
- 4
- Infill
- 30% gyroid
- Speed
- 40–50 mm/s
- Cooling
- ~30%
- Filament
- dry before use
▸ Clearance and tolerance
- Design gap
- 0.25 mm0.010 in
- FDM convention
- 0.2–0.3 mm snug0.5 mm general
- PETG shrinkage
- 0.3–0.6%up to ~0.8%
Verify XY tolerance with a printed test cube before committing to a full set. At this clearance per-printer calibration is likely: if parts do not engage cleanly, measure shrinkage and re-slice with compensation rather than sanding the joints.
The material is not a free choice. The gap is toleranced against PETG shrinkage, and the dovetail carries pull-out load through interlayer bonds, where PETG has the adhesion the joint needs.
▸ Files
Release 2026-07-31. 53 parts as 3MF and STL, with STEP kept per part for remixing. The release segment is immutable: a link you save today keeps resolving to the geometry you downloaded.
▸ 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 the whole return: it is why the files are free.
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. 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.
▸ Configure a cluster
Lay out tiles, inserts and caps in the browser, then print a dimensioned build sheet with the bill of materials for exactly the layout you made.