THE MATERIALS
THE ENGINE
THINKS IN.
Every crate is computed board by board. The engine reads your material profile — new wood or scrap inventory — and derives framing, slatting, joints and skids from real board dimensions. Here is exactly how it works, from the three numbers that define a board to the splice joints that stitch a crate together.
The Board Profile
The entire design springs from a single idea: wood comes in boards, and boards have three numbers — thickness, width and length. The engine treats every member of the crate as a real board with those numbers, then assembles them with engineering logic.
The classic pallet board: 18 mm thick, 100 mm wide. Unless you say otherwise, this is the stock the engine assumes — and every post, rim, brace and skid is sized from it.
| Property | Value | What it drives |
|---|---|---|
| Board width | 100 mm | Frame member width (fw_main) — posts, rims, braces and skids |
| Board thickness | 18 mm | Core wall thickness (t_core) — the structural heart of every wall |
| Skid height | 100 mm | Forklift runner height under the crate (skid_h) |
| Max bay span | 900 mm | The longest unsupported span a wall bay may carry before an intermediate vertical is added |
| Scab overlap | 200 mm | The reinforcement plate length at every end-to-end splice joint |
All dimensions in the system are millimetres, computed with full geometric precision — mitre angles, offsets and splice lengths are calculated, never eyeballed.
New Material Sourcing
When you choose a new material source, you tell the engine the wood you intend to purchase and its gross thickness — the frame members are then sized from your purchased thickness while board width defaults to 100 mm. The engine supports the following purchased materials:
General-purpose framing, classic slat crates. Rendered in deep timber browns — warm frame tones with lighter skin.
Lightweight, dimensionally stable wall panels. Rendered in bright blond tones — pale frame and pale skin.
Smooth solid-box surfaces and interior linings. Rendered in mid browns — solid, dense-looking panels.
Economical structural sheathing. Rendered in a uniform warm sand tone across frame and skin.
The same material can also be chosen as an interior wall covering — for example, MDF lining inside a slat crate — and the engine colours and thickens the interior accordingly.
The Scrap Protocol
Choose a scrap / pallet-rest source and the engine activates what we call the Smart Sorting Engine. The journey from pallet to stock follows the recovery process described in full on the Scrap Wood Builds page — collecting the pallets, disassembling them, and classifying the same parts into standardized families of identical dimensions. That classification is exactly what you enter in the generator: tick “Enable Custom Wood Limits…”, set the number of different sizes with the +/− dial, and give each class its thickness, length and width — the engine reads your real inventory as an array of pieces and does the woodworking arithmetic for you:
- Thickest and widest pieces are mathematically selected for the load-bearing frame — posts, rims and skids, where strength matters most.
- Thinnest pieces are routed to the slats and decking, where weight matters more than strength.
- Splice joints are computed where pieces must be joined end-to-end to reach full length — with scab reinforcement plates (200 mm overlap) placed automatically at the seams.
- Minimum segment rules are respected — every span keeps solid wood at its ends and centre spine, so no joint ever lands where it would weaken the structure.
- Cut-list accountability — the blueprint closes the loop with a cut list per recovered class, so every board you collected, disassembled and classified appears in the build.
Give the engine your pile of leftover boards and it answers with the strongest crate those boards can possibly form — nothing wasted, nothing undersized.
The Three Wall Modes
The exterior is yours to tailor. The engine offers three construction modes that change the skin of every wall:
| Mode | Description | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Slats only | The classic crate — vertical or horizontal slats over an open frame | Airflow, economy, the traditional look |
| Slats + lining | The “vault box” — exterior slats plus a solid interior panel lining | Dust-tight, rain-tight protection for precious cargo |
| Lining only | A completely solid exterior box — continuous plywood or MDF sheets, no slats | Maximum sealing and surface smoothness |
Combine any wall mode with your wall orientation — vertical or horizontal slats — and optional X-bracing for heavy loads: every brace is a pair of angle-cut, half-lap notched boards (2 boards per X), and the blueprint numbers each conjoint with its own marking stencil.
Structural Members
Inside the skin, every crate is assembled from a disciplined set of members:
- Corner and edge posts — angled to the crate geometry, sized at the full frame width, running floor-to-cap.
- Lower and upper rims — continuous horizontal bands that tie every wall together at the floor and the cap.
- Horizontal braces — bottom, middle and top, spaced along the wall height for stiffness.
- Inner verticals — intermediate uprights where spans exceed the 900 mm safe unsupported length.
- Skid base — three solid runners (front edge, centre spine, back edge) plus decking boards, arranged so the notch opening stays clear for pallet jacks.
Geometry & Footprint
The default footprint is a six-sided (hexagonal) prism — a geometry that distributes handling forces across angled corners instead of square ones, and that the engine mitres precisely so every joint meets with full face contact. The interior volume is then computed and reported in your design specifications, complete with the interior volumetric analysis so you know exactly what fits inside.
Finally, the engine is fully backwards compatible: older order formats are mapped automatically to the modern design parameters, so historical designs regenerate identically — a classic coffin spec and today's build run on the same engine.