My 3D printer solved three desk problems I didn't know how to fix

Published Aug 28, 2026, 3:30 PM EDT Dhruv Bhutani has been writing about consumer technology since 2008, offering deep insights into the personal technology landscape through features and opinion pieces. He writes for XDA-Developers, where he focuses on topics like productivity, networking, self-hosting, and more. Over the years, his work has also appeared in leading publications such as Android Police, Android Authority, CNET, PCMag, and more. Outside of his professional work, Dhruv is an avid fan of horror media spanning films and literature, enjoys fitness activities, collects vinyl records, and plays the guitar. I've printed enough benchies and Pikachu figurines in my time with 3D printers. Fun as those are, they ultimately serve no purpose. That's not to say I've not printed anything useful with my 3D printer. The things that have stuck around on my desk are very different in nature. These objects solve daily annoyances and have become an essential part of my setup. While I've printed more than a few nifty quality-of-life objects, three specific additions to my desk setup are the ones I reach for practically every day. My daily go-tos are a wrist rest to tackle RSI, a growing Gridfinity setup, and a custom mount for a tablet that runs the Home Assistant dashboard. These aren't highly technical prints at all. But there's no reason why something that solves daily frustrations needs to be particularly complicated. Mouse wrist-rest When you spend the entire day in front of a computer I spend anywhere from 12 to 16 hours at my desk every day, and I've got a mouse in my hand most of that time. Lately, I've noticed wrist pain from all those hours of resting my wrist on my desk. To ease the pain and prevent further injury, I've been looking for a solid wrist rest that doesn't get in my way. I've seen plenty of commercial models and tried a few, but none truly fit my needs. They just didn't suit the curvature of my wrist all that well. So, I ended up downloading a model and adjusting the height to specifically suit how I hold my mouse. A mouse wrist rest isn't particularly large or wide. However, because commercial models need to accommodate all sizes, they tend to run oversized. As someone with dainty little wrists, they never really fit my needs. My 3D-printed model, on the other hand, fits like a glove and has significantly reduced the amount of strain I'd feel while working for hours on end. So much so that I can't think of using my mouse without one. Gridfinity bins and base Customized bins stop my desk from becoming a junk drawer Like most tech nerds, I have a habit of cramming as many cables as I can into the drawers under my desk. Predictably, this has left half the drawers jammed. I would pick up organization boxes, but finding something that not only matches the proportions but also my specific needs is borderline impossible. Between USB adapters, earphones, and spare parts, my desk gets cluttered quickly. Enough that I'm too embarrassed to share a picture of it. Now, I can put these items in the drawer, but we circle back to the same problem. Gridfinity gives me a middle ground to the problem. The system uses a standardized grid and modular bins that I can fully customize to my size requirements. So, I can combine different containers in the same base. I'm using the clickable base variant of Gridfinity, which means I can lock these containers into place so that they don't shuffle around. As my needs evolve, I can print out new containers. Containers with lids, containers with cutouts for specific tools like screwdrivers or measuring tapes, even containers for containers if that floats your boat. I'm still going through the process of printing out all the bins I need, but I've already seen a significant upgrade in drawer organization. The best part, of course, is the fact that you don't need to get this right in one go. Just print a new bin if something doesn't work quite as well as you expected. Home Assistant dashboard mount A tablet mount that puts Home Assistant within reach My third essential print is an Android tablet mount. Using a tablet as a Home Assistant dashboard is pretty common. However, if something is going to be placed up front in my study, it needs to look good. To that end, I've printed out a bespoke mount that matches the dimensions of my Android tablet. With screw holes and integrated recessed routing for cabling, it makes my tablet look like an elegant commercial solution. Combined with Fully Kiosk Browser and a dashboard optimized for touch input, I've now got a setup that looks custom-kitted out for my home office. I love it. I know I can just mount a tablet on a desk stand and call it a day, but the 3D-printed mount elevates the setup from a fun weekend project to something carefully designed. The prints that make the cut are the ones that solve real problems These three prints might seem fairly simple compared to the kind of things people tend to print. But that's not the point here. Having a 3D printer opens up the opportunity to solve problems in a fully customized way. The mouse wrist rest is customized to my hand and has made long writing sessions much easier. Similarly, Gridfinity has helped make sense of my organizational clutter. Meanwhile, the mount for my Home Assistant dashboard was exactly what I needed to elevate my home office while giving it a tech upgrade. All that to say, the three most-used 3D-printed accessories on my desk are the ones that solve everyday practical problems for me. Bambu Labs A2L The Bambu A2L is a large-format bedslinger 3D printer capable of printing large volumes, and in multiple colors with AMS compatibility.