Small Parts Tray made from Contact Lens Cases

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Contact lens cases make great small parts containers. They are designed with curved ridged sides to allow easy retrieval of small slippery things. They have watertight seals, guaranteeing that your parts won’t fall out. With a bunch of cases, a little hot glue and a mounting surface, you can have a cheap, reliable, easy to use storage system.




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If you wear contacts, you know how easy it can be to end up with many more cases than you need. Every time you buy solution or get an eye exam, you get another.




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Find a scrap piece of wood or plastic of a convenient size and arrange your cases on it.




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Turn them over and put a dab of hot glue on each side, then put back in place on the board.




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When all your cases are glued on, fill with components, buttons, beads, or what-have-you. Label the caps with a permanent marker. And that’s it! Your parts are safe and sound, easy to get to and organized.




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10 thoughts on “Small Parts Tray made from Contact Lens Cases”

  1. awesome blog…….. get a laugh from the apple pie, briliant !thumbs up for the effort ! will supprise my chef with that

  2. Not to rain on a great idea, but are these containers ESD safe? It doesn’t matter if you’re storing resistors, capacitors or other passive devices, but pretty much all semiconductor devices are static sensitive.

    1. For most components, they’re just fine. If you’re especially concerned or have especially sensitive parts, you could either mount the cases to a metal plate or you could put individual parts on anti-static foam, like the laser in the first photo.

  3. this would be cooler if you glued magnets to the back and stuck it on some steel sheet. also cut the cases in half so they individual instead of pairs.

  4. When labelling containers like these I’ve found that a piece of clear tape over the felt marker keeps the label readable for a lot longer.

  6. Oh. My. God.. this would be perfect for storing acrylic paints… mix, then dot the top of the lid with the color.. this is an awesome idea!

  7. Holy crap. I thought that as far as a storage system went, it was just all right, but for storing small amounts of acrylic paint it’s GENIUS.

  8. They’re totally awesome for storing wet media. I’ve been using a few for years to store small amounts of ink for brush and ink works, and they’re *awesome*. I don’t do acrylics yet, but IMO it’d be ideal for keeping the paint wet, and they’re so magically leak-proof….

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