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I've tested up to 7 units high, which stands about 12"/30cm tall (and the '1 day to launch' pic here was 6 high), and it's stable at that height. I'm planning to get some more assembly examples up in the updates next week, and will cover some taller builds then.

One of the planned stretch goals is for some brackets to wall mount the rack or brace taller builds, but barring a very impressive late surge that is likely to be something added later.

Linking some units together for the STL files would be pretty simple to do - although we'd need to be careful of making the parts too big for people's build plates... I'll put it on the to-do list.

On a different note - between now and midday Sunday London time, pop on over to the StackaRack Facebook page here and post a pic of a favourite terrain piece or diorama that you have built, and we might send you some free Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprues! Check out the Facebook post for details.

So 40 paints is 'Ultimate' is it? Definite case of scale fail there.

You need options for 100 and 150, and remove retail lock (if any) from the retail pledge.

Some tips:
Current range of Army Painter paints = 134
Current range of Vallejo Game Color paints = 164 (Model Color is much larger)
Current range of Warcolours = 208.
Current range of Citadel paints = 251 plus 78 duplicated as Air paints.

You will need to cater for OCD level of paint collecting. If unsure ask Dakka and some of us may dare confess.

How tall can this product go and still remain stable?

 Orlanth wrote:
So 40 paints is 'Ultimate' is it?

In terms of this project, and without buying into the 250 unit pack, yes it was the best price break, and was a reasonable number for the casual painter who doesn't tend to collect entire ranges of paints. For more than that, just taking multiples of the pledge is an option. We have been getting quite a few requests for larger packs though, so will be working that in.

And no, there's no 'retail lock' on the 250 pack. It's available to anyone.

How tall can this product go and still remain stable?

I've tested it up to 7 units high (which stands about 12" tall) so far with no stability issues. We'll be sharing more build tests and examples as the design is refined.

 insaniak wrote:

In terms of this project, and without buying into the 250 unit pack, yes [40] was the best price break, and was a reasonable number for the casual painter who doesn't tend to collect entire ranges of paints.

I think you are missing your market. 40 paints will fit into a GW project box and can be carried around, a good product that marries easy storage with in use display.
https://www.games-workshop.com/en-GB/Medium-Project-Box-2018
40+ dropper bottles fit into an Essential Oils case which can be bought on eBay for a wide variety of prices. I bought mine here for chump change.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/313485635900
£11 for a case that holds 60 Vallejo or Army Painter paints, I bought three and would have bought more had I needed to do so.
There are numerous sellers of paint racks out of MDF, too many to list.

I think your niche is that you can build vertical and have it as a backstop for your hobby area and hold all your paints, or all the paints you are currently interested, and be suitable for a variety of manufacturers including all the main ones. It is modular so you can build to your individual space. Like others have said corner connectors would be very useful. However if you are displaying less than 60 paints at a time you are far better off with a Citadel project case or an Essential Oils case as you can set it up with near instant access to all the paints and keep full portability.

 insaniak wrote:

How tall can this product go and still remain stable?

I've tested it up to 7 units high (which stands about 12" tall) so far with no stability issues. We'll be sharing more build tests and examples as the design is refined.

Now some tough love.

This does need more testing. Ten to fifteen high sounds about right for comfortable immediate reach from a hobby table to the wall behind. Then twenty to thirty wide, maybe more in a block or an L shape. In this scale your product is looking useful and tempting. Looking at your pictures your product is very bulky for what it holds, the other storage options I have mentioned, other than the MDF racks have the advantage that they hold a lot of paint in a small area, and are efficient designs. Unless I can exploit verticality to a reasonable maximum I don't see that much use for what you are producing.

I wonder if you can do an alt design that sacrifices some degree of modularity for efficiency. How about having two mirrored plastic pieces with storage four or five pots high that are stackable with a foot and end cap, and replicatable in adjacent rows. There is a lot of plastic in this design, too much in my opinion.

On the testing - yes, it absolutely needs more. Based on my testing so far, up to at least 10 high should still be stable, but needs more time and money to do this testing properly. That's part of what the Kickstarter is funding. We'll be testing different configurations and tweaking the design accordingly based on that. There are also a few different potential stabilisation options to explore to squeeze out extra height, and obviously adding corners will immediately add stability to tall units as well - the question there is whether the corners fund now or have to be added in later.

The multiple unit idea was something we discussed early on, but it locks you in to building around the configuration of those units. As mentioned up the thread, it's something we can do as an extra with the STL release, but isn't feasible for the plastic version at this point.

Thanks for the feedback - getting different perspectives on the project was a big part of what we were hoping for, so that's been very helpful.

I wish you well but it has to pass a practicality threshold. Let me tell you where I am with this:

I have two main paint sets, a complete Army Painter set based on the limited edition complete paint set box. This is now stored in three small Essential Oils case, it is very well and tightly packaged, smaller than the original packaging from Army Painter and far sturdier and more presentable. It would take a lot of effort to get me to choose another painting storage solution. However if painting a general project I will need to open up all three cases, each takes up roughly a 30x30cm space, the case with the lid leaning back against something. One case is ok, but all three is a serious inconvenience and I normally manage by reserving a large side table just for them.
The take away from this is that 60 is a minimum investment to be worth using, and double that is more handy.

My Citadel paints are in two of the larger Project boxes, each twice the size as the one I linked earlier. When opened out I have four mini trays for each box. One of the smaller projct boxes and its two trays deploys just over 60 paints and again is not too inconvenient, the larger box and its four trays is a little too much though, and deploying both of them is a pain. Yes these cases are for paint selections not for whole collections, but I do own nearly the entire range of Citadel paints minus one or two of the newer and chapter specific paints, and I do like to be able to get my hands on pretty much any colour.
Truth be told I am used to the bulk of the large project box now, and that can deploy 130 paints, I struggle to fit both project boxes on even a large side table though. So for Citadel my usable minimum to make your project worthwhile is double that for Army Painter.

As it current stands and is marketed I cannot see myself buying your paint racks, and while I can appreciate the versatility of individual paint holders I would rather see more compact linking blocks of multiple paint holders, preferably stacking in a honeycomb pattern. This would be less versatile, but IMHO more practical and cost less on a per capacity basis. It does also need to be stackable tall, though end users can reach 15-20+ unit storage by using glue if needs be. The taller the storage can get (within reasonable reach and while retaining a small footprint) the more efficient the painting table area gets, and this is so important.

Given the right density, versatility in paint carried (you get an A for that at least), and price point; I could see myself ordering enough racking for 300-400 pots, and I doubt I will be the only one.

For those considering STL backing options, can you offer ballpark per-unit material usage estimates? Obviously it'll differ a little bit from printer to printer, but a starting point would be helpful.

Kaffis wrote:
For those considering STL backing options, can you offer ballpark per-unit material usage estimates? Obviously it'll differ a little bit from printer to printer, but a starting point would be helpful.

Working on that at the moment, and will have it in an update in the next few days.

So, as I read it, I need to back it at some physical product level, to get access to the ME terrain sprues, which won't add to the shipping.. however, I dont see where shipping is mentioned at all.

I am well aware that shipping is order dependent, but a minimum ship cost would be nice, if I really want those terrain sprues.

 Orlanth wrote:

I think you are missing your market.

I don't think they are, I think the market they are aiming at just doesn't include you. You've mentioned the cases you have and the benefits of their portability and so on, but this is clearly a product marketed towards though that want a more permanent wall/rack style solution (i.e. the ones buying makeup racks or mdf racks atm). those are the products they are competing with, not cases.

With four days to go, we're tracking to exceed the funding target (currently sitting at 92%!)





In the last couple of days, we have also reworked our expansion plans a little in the interests of getting as much functionality into StackaRack as possible as quickly as possible. To that end, we've designed a simpler version of the corner piece than we had originally planned, so that it can be combined onto the 'Accessory' sprue that is unlocked with the first stretch goal. So if we manage to hit this funding target, the StackaRack will come as a paint holder sprue holding three units, and an accessory sprue holding the clips, a base and a 45-degree corner piece that can also be used on the top level of your rack as a tool holder. This corner piece will be invaluable for adding extra customisation options and additional stability to your StackaRack!





We have also added in a 'Digital Plus' option as a Reward tier and also as an add-on for the phsyical sprue pledges that will guarantee backers a printable STL file of that corner piece regardless of whether or not the Stretch Goal is reached.

The end is in sight, but we still need your help to make StackaRack as good as it can be. Jump on board and pledge now!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/spiralarmstudios/stackarack

 porkuslime wrote:
So, as I read it, I need to back it at some physical product level, to get access to the ME terrain sprues, which won't add to the shipping.. however, I dont see where shipping is mentioned at all.

I am well aware that shipping is order dependent, but a minimum ship cost would be nice, if I really want those terrain sprues.

Shipping to the US from the Maelstrom's Edge webstore is generally about $3.10 (drastically cheaper than most of the rest of the world outside the UK, thanks to the vagaries of the postal system). If we use the same order fulfillment service for StackaRack, then I would expect shipping to be about the same, at least for smaller quantities - but that's going to depend on final quantities, the size of the individual pledges and the final makeup of the sprues, so is at best a guess and may be wildly inaccurate. Bundles of 100 sprues are likely to be considerably more due to the size of the packages.

 Shooter wrote:

I don't think they are, I think the market they are aiming at just doesn't include you. You've mentioned the cases you have and the benefits of their portability and so on, but this is clearly a product marketed towards though that want a more permanent wall/rack style solution (i.e. the ones buying makeup racks or mdf racks atm). those are the products they are competing with, not cases.

I use makeup racks. But I can fit something like 63 Contrast paints, or more Vallejo etc., on a seven-tier acrylic makeup rack that costs me £11 posted. So while I'd like to support Dakka / Maelstrom's Edge, etc. (and did back the ME game Kickstarter) these just aren't an economical solution for permanent storage for me. I do hope the campaign succeeds but I think it will do so mostly from people 3D printing.

The campaign is at 99% now, and the majority of that is for physical sprues, not the digital files.

We did fully expect that the price would be a tough nut for some, but that was unavoidable, unfortunately.

Yaay, and sneaked over the funding line now as well!

Gratz guys.

Grats on another successful kickstarter.