Pro organiser portable battery storage case

Batteries rattling around a toolbox isn’t ideal, not only because they can bump into everything, but damaged batteries can be dangerous! We thought that the best way to protect them is with a Shadow Foam Insert. To show how, we used a DeWalt / Stanley Fatmax Deep Pro Organiser to organise a set of DeWalt power tool batteries. We think that the battery organiser we create is a great way to take all your batteries away from site at the end of the day. Plus with your new portable battery protector you’ll know if one is missing with one quick look.

Choosing the Pro Organiser as our battery storage case

Both Stanley and DeWalt sell this case. It’s really durable, has a good strong seal, and it’s part of a system that clips together like the TSTAK. For this purpose then we think it’s ideal as it’s got a strong handle and is small enough to just take batteries away from site at the end of the day for charging. The capacity to clip another unit to it also makes it future proof since if you add more batteries over time they can all be kept together. As standard, this comes with lots of little plastic trays, or cubbies that ordinarily you might want to store screws or bits in. For our purpose using it as a battery storage case, we don’t need these so we’ll take them out and replace it with one of our foam inserts.

Our inserts are ready made to fit the Pro Organiser, and come in a twin pack with a choice of colours and either in 30mm or 50mm depth. For this case we’ve opted for a 50mm sheet in Blue. Yellow and black would look good with the case and batteries but we want it to look really obvious if something is missing, at a glance, so the blue does that nicely.

Create the layout for your battery organiser

First as always is the important job of planning the layout. Do this however will work best for you. For us, to create a portable battery unit we wanted to include a charger which can either be used in-situ or taken out for charging. And we have 2 of the larger 4 amp batteries and 5 of the smaller 2 amp batteries which, for us is all the power we are likely to need. Other variations we see on this kind of case could also include a couple of the little plastic cubbies which we removed so you have them cut into the foam for storing smaller bits too, but we don’t really need that in our case.

We’ve made sure we have a nice 10mm gap between the items and the edges, and the layout looks good to us. You might want to take a photo to remind you of the layout as you work. And then it’s time for cutting!

Cutting the foam for your battery storage case

We send out a free cutting pack with all website orders over £50 and these contain a scalpel and 5 blades. We really recommend that you wear protective, anti-cut gloves when handling these blades too and you can get those in our cutting kits. These are really cost-effective to buy and if you are buying foam you can get these from us at half price, so it’s well worth adding that kit too if you can.

Apply a little light pressure to the item so it doesn’t move, and then holding the scalpel like a pencil, begin cutting. Make sure you keep the scalpel perpendicular to the foam and trace cut all the way around till you’re back at the start. Then you can take the battery away and cut down to your required depth. For us, as the foam is 50mm and we want to retain 10mm at the base to give the foam strength and integrity, that will be 40mm.

Once you’ve cut to the depth you want it’s time to peel. Just start in one corner where you’ve cut and push your fingers in. The action is to almost plough through the foam with your fingers, pulling it away as you do. Once you’re done, then it’s time to repeat that process with all your other batteries! The batteries then sit snugly in the foam which acts as a nice battery protector whenever you’re on the move.

Taking your charger on the move?

For the charger, we will be taking a slightly different approach. A common problem that people find when organising their tools is what to do with cables and plugs. Our personal bug bear is that cables can look scruffy when coiled, but also there’s the damage factor which can occur when cables are repeatedly wound. So our solution of choice is to hide the plug and the lead beneath the charger unit itself.

The method is to cut the profile of the charger as normal, and we have gone down to 30mm depth here, leaving us 20mm depth of foam beneath within the Stanley Fatmax Deep Pro Organiser to play with. Our aim will be for the charger to stand a little prouder than this 30mm since we know there is sufficient room in the case for us to do that. So into the cavity we’ve created for the charger, we now cut around the plug. On this occasion we will be going down the full depth of the foam to give us maximum concealment. Once you have the plug shape defined, you can also cut down another section into which the cable itself will sit.

The finished battery protector case.

Following cutting it’s time to pop the insert back into the case and do a test-fit. Everything in our case fits perfectly and the lid of the case still shuts with a nice positive close, so we know we have a tight seal. We think this is the ideal portable battery storage case solution to keep you organised and ready for anything.