Custom Lego Storage Box: Routering 5/8″ MDF

Simon needed a bigger custom Lego storage box for his growing collection of bricks so I decided to make one for him perfect to his requirements.

The material I made this custom Lego storage box out of was 5/8″ MDF, it machines very well, glues great and sands fantastically.

CNCROi.com always has a digital version of the designs we fabricate, this helps proof the design but more importantly, end-up being the files we use to communicate with our CNC equipment, regardless of which one, as to what we will ultimately tell it to make for us.

Once the design is proofed and accepted by the CNCROi.com customer (me in this case so it’s pretty quick), it’s time to throw a sheet of 4 ft x 8 ft 5/8″ MDF onto our Thermwood CNC router to begin carving and cutting out the pieces that will become the finished custom Lego storage box.

This was actually his old Lego box, it worked well until he ran out of room.

Etching is always first, in hindsight, I should have etched Simon’s name on these but I was thinking more of the application this custom Lego storage box was for rather than whom it was for, Simon, my son.

The reason why I made this custom Lego storage box rectangular rather than square was because Simon’s current Lego box is square, and I found, while searching through it for specific pieces, pushing Lego from one side of a box to the other, that more room was needed to allow things to pile-up on one side rather than just a generally larger box and a rectangle is a better shape for this purpose using minimal room for the best digging results.

If you are wondering how I began when it came to custom designing and fabricating things using a CNC router, the above video shows you how fast time flies by.

CNCROi.com has years of  MDF experience, it’s used almost daily in our shop from furniture to jigs, for a large variety of projects using both our CNC router and laser… and even welding.

Yep, those spindle spacings were made with our laser and quarter inch MDF.

The nice thing about MDF over real wood with grain is that it doesn’t want to dimensionally shift on you, meaning, there is no internal stress pushing or pulling into it to make things want to warp after production, as long as we don’t clear one side and not the other surface.

If you are looking to store money or smaller items, we can also custom design and fabricate pretty much anything you have in mind.

MDF is also plentiful, so it’s easy to get just about any thickness CNCROi.com customers require and more importantly, we can skim off the “top” if required to get to specific thickness requirements.

The dust you see built-up on the edges and top of this custom Lego storage box while cutting it is just a mix of what the MDF is made from, resins, glues and wood particles.

Cutting out these individual pieces that will soon form a box using a CNC router is the most precise way of fabricating furniture pieces such as this, everything is dead-on, the manual labor is only required to load and unload the sheet of 5/8″ MDF and most importantly, details are free, meaning if I wanted a chamfer, writing or reference holes and the like, it really requires no additional work for CNCROi.com.

Storage doesn’t always need to be in a box, it can also be in corners and even overhead… for Simon’s Lego box, I needed something he could easily move around to play with.

Once all these pieces are cut, the next step is paint, MDF loves paint, it’s a solid surface and the results always look great after a few coats.

You’ll notice the paint isn’t applied in the lower step of these custom Lego storage box pieces, that’s because I want MDF on MDF with glue and nails there, paint would just provide a barrier to adhesion.

You can see the glue coming out in the picture below where the pieces come together in the left side of the custom Lego storage box.

Boxes can be as unique as you want them to be, or even items that are completely hidden away from sight, yet in plain sight.

Painting the inside of something is not easy to do evenly, as a result, that’s why I painted the inside of the custom Lego storage box first before assembly, then my job to paint the outside is a piece of cake at  CNCROi.com.

I applied two coats of paint on this custom Lego storage box, the paint dries so fast that generally, I can apply one coat and within an hour, apply another then let the box sit for a day to fully cure.

Boxes can be used for storage but also cut out for interesting lighting patterns too.

This entire custom Lego storage box is on five casters, each is able to hold 55 pounds, so it means Simon can ride on this even when he weighs over 250 pounds, the MDF is plenty strong to hold that kinda of weight as well due to the way it’s interlocked.

This was a quick little project that’s been very useful since I made this, Simon’s used it to store his Lego with great success and has been able to far more easily, find the pieces he’s looking for.

The cover also has a carved out lip area, so that once placed on the box, there is a snug fit and it isn’t searching to move around, making the box rather rigid and strong.

Through the years, I’ve made boxes of all types, sizes and using a variety of different materials.

I applied two coats of paint on this custom Lego storage box, just to make sure I got everything, the picture below is after the first coat, the second was applied after the wheels were in place as some of the LEGO carving didn’t have good paint coverage.

The paint does two things, first, it protects the  MDF from general scuff marks and other abrasion and secondly, makes the custom Lego storage box nicer to look at… MDF is a lot of things, but pretty it is not!

Need a custom box? Contact CNCROi.com right now!