Board Game Inserts & Organisers
A good insert ends the ten-minute setup and the bag-of-bits shuffle: trays lift out onto the table, everything has a home, and the lid still shuts. The catch is that it has to fit your box — not the box in the photo on the internet.
Serving South & West Yorkshire and nearby, and posting parts across the UK · Guide prices in seconds · No account needed
Get a board game inserts & organisers estimate
Upload your file or describe the part. We review printability before confirming anything.
Common uses
- Full box inserts with lift-out trays for setup and pack-down
- Card trays for sleeved or unsleeved decks, upright or laid flat
- Token, cube and meeple trays with lids for vertical storage
- Dice towers and dice trays
- Player boards, resource bowls and first-player markers
- Expansion storage — fitting a big box back into the base box
Measure your box — do not trust the internet
This is the honest bit, and it is the one that ruins inserts. An insert is a precision fit to a cardboard box that was never made to precision. Publishers retool boxes between printings, so a design drawn for a first edition can be several millimetres out on the reprint sitting on your shelf — and several millimetres is the difference between a tray that drops in and a tray that has to be persuaded. Boxes also taper: the internal dimension at the base is not the dimension at the rim, so measure at the base, and measure the depth from the base to where the lid actually bottoms out rather than to the top of the tray. Then subtract the boards, because they sit on top and the insert lives underneath them. Sleeves are the other trap. Sleeve thickness varies by a lot between types, and a hundred sleeved cards is a noticeably taller stack than the same deck bare — so do not tell us the card count, measure the actual stack with the sleeves you use. If the insert ends up 2mm too tall, the lid sits proud, the box splays, and everything above it on the shelf leans. We would rather have your measurements than a link to a file. Send us dimensions with a rule in shot and we will tell you what fits. One more thing we will not claim: printed plastic is not archival or card-safe, and we will not describe it as either. It is PLA or PETG — a storage convenience, not a conservation measure. Keep the cards sleeved, keep the box out of a hot loft, and do not treat an insert as protection for something you genuinely care about long term.
Trays, towers and what to tell us
Tell us how you actually play, because that decides the design more than the box does. Cards upright with a finger scoop is fastest to deal from; cards flat is more compact and better if the deck is short. Token trays want lids if you ever store the box on its side — and most people do, eventually, when the shelf fills up. Trays that lift straight out and become the table layout save more setup time than clever compartments do. If you have expansions, say so at the start: sometimes the honest answer is that the base box will not hold the base game plus two expansions no matter how well the insert is designed, and you are choosing between a bigger box and two boxes. We will tell you that up front rather than after the plastic is printed. Dice towers, trays and the rest of the table furniture are straightforward and often the easiest thing to start with.
Material, print time and what an insert costs
PLA is the right default here. It is rigid, dimensionally stable, cheap, prints cleanly, and a board game box lives indoors on a shelf where none of PLA's weaknesses — heat, UV, creep under load — ever come up. PETG is worth it for a tray with thin flexing walls or a lid catch that gets worked every session. The thing worth knowing is that a full insert is a lot of plastic and a lot of hours: it is one of the larger jobs a hobbyist orders, and the cost tracks the volume. Splitting it into separate modules almost always works out better — cheaper to print, easier to post, and when the expansion arrives you reprint one tray instead of the lot. You own the file, so that reprint is materials and machine time.
How it works
Send your file or describe the part
Upload an STL, OBJ, 3MF or STEP file, or tell us what you need with photos and a few measurements.
Get a guide price
When we can read the geometry we estimate from it straight away — material, print time, supports and quantity all priced openly.
We check printability, then confirm
A person reviews orientation, wall thickness and supports, flags anything that will not print well, and confirms your final quote before any work starts.
Board Game Inserts & Organisers — example prices
Worked examples on real models from our print library, priced by the same calculator that estimates your own part. Sizes span small to large so you can see how cost moves with the part.
| Example part | Size | PLA | PETG | ABS / ASA |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Parts Bin (small) | 40 × 40 × 25 mm | £5.16 – £6.59 | £5.50 – £7.02 | £6.29 – £8.03 |
| Parts Bin (medium) | 60 × 40 × 30 mm | £7.65 – £9.78 | £8.15 – £10.42 | £9.32 – £11.90 |
| Drawer Organiser Tray | 100 × 60 × 20 mm | £11.41 – £14.57 | £12.15 – £15.52 | £13.87 – £17.73 |
| Parts Bin (deep) | 100 × 80 × 50 mm | £23.42 – £29.93 | £24.93 – £31.86 | £28.44 – £36.34 |
Guide prices for a single unit, calculated from the measured geometry of each example model — not fixed quotes. Small parts land at or near the £0 minimum order, and per-unit prices fall with quantity. Your price depends on your own part, its material and its printability. How pricing works.
Example models for board game inserts & organisers
Open-source designs from our print library that show the kind of part this service suits. View any of them for a full material and quantity price breakdown.
Furniture Foot (large)
Drawer Organiser Tray
10mm Calibration Cube
Furniture Foot (medium)
These are open-source example designs (CC0) we publish to show what the process suits and what it costs — not a record of past jobs. Prices shown are examples in PLA.
Board Game Inserts & Organisers — FAQ
Can I just send you an insert STL I found online?+
Yes, and we will print it — but measure your box first and compare. Files are usually drawn for one printing of a game, and boxes get retooled between editions. If your box is a few millimetres different, the tray will not drop in. Five minutes with a rule saves the whole job.
Will it hold my sleeved cards?+
If you measure the sleeved stack rather than counting cards, yes. Sleeve thickness varies enormously between types, and the difference across a full deck is easily enough to make a tray too tight. Give us the measured stack height and width with your sleeves on.
Can you fit the base game and all the expansions in the original box?+
Sometimes, and sometimes the volume simply is not there — cardboard does not stretch. Send the dimensions and the contents and we will work it out before anything is printed. If it does not fit, we will say so rather than design something that almost closes.
Is the plastic safe for my cards over the long term?+
We cannot make that claim and we will not. Filament is not tested for long-term contact with printed card stock, and we have no data to offer you. Sleeve the cards, avoid storing the box anywhere hot, and treat the insert as organisation rather than preservation.
How much does board game inserts & organisers cost?+
There is no fixed per-item rate — price comes from how much plastic the part uses, how long it takes to print, how much support and finishing it needs, and how many you want. The example table above shows what real parts of this kind work out at. Upload your file for a guide price on your own part.
How long does it take?+
It depends on the size of the part, the queue and the material. Tell us your deadline when you enquire and we will tell you honestly whether it is achievable before you commit.
Can I order one of the models from your library?+
Yes. Every model in our print library is a design you can have printed — pick one, choose a material and quantity, and the example price on its page is your starting point. You can also download the file and take it elsewhere; they are all CC0.
Are my files kept private?+
Yes. Uploaded files go to private storage, are never made public, and are only used to quote and produce your job.
Worth reading first
Practical guides that help you get a better part and a more accurate quote.
Supports and Overhangs Explained
Plastic will not print in mid-air. Here is the 45° rule, what bridging really does, why supports leave scars, and how to design so you need fewer of them.
How to Copy a Part Without CAD
No file, no drawing, just a broken part and a pair of calipers. That is a perfectly normal starting point — here is how the process actually works.
Do 3D Printed Parts Shrink?
Yes — every material, every time. The question is how much, in which direction, and what to do about it before you pay for a part that does not fit.
Other services
Get a 3D print estimate
Upload your file or describe the part. We review printability before confirming anything.