Open Design – Modular Magnetic Miniature Mounting

Storage and transport of painted miniatures is one of the most annoying aspects of being involved in tabletop gaming. After several unsuccessful storage iterations using instrument foam, I came up with the idea of putting magnets in their bases and attaching them to some sort of a steel mounting bracket.

A steel surface alone, while providing adequate perpendicular support to the models, does not provide high resistance to planar forces (The magnet can slide across the surface without pulling off it). However if you add a supporting bracket, you get the convenience of magnetic mounting with sufficient protection for most bumps and shakes involved in transport.

This is was the origin of the Warhammer infantry mounting bracket, which I designed and built during my spare time in the Covid lock-down. The design is modular allowing any combination of standard 32mm and 40mm games workshop infantry bases (I don’t have any models that use 25mm but it would be a trivial adaptation). All the modular brackets, slide onto a normal 36mm width stainless-steel ruler and with the magic of a little epoxy between each, you have an simple magnetic mount.

The cool part about it is the end-caps have recesses for 5mm magnets that can be glued into the optional framing pieces. This means the bracket itself can be easily removed from a storage container in once piece, without removing the models individually. I’m planning on receiving some significant ‘nerd-clout’ by rapidly unloading my model strips like ammo magazines from my storage box.

The idea and 3D models are all released as free to use and modify (see link below), even though there probably is a niche market for something like this, there’s no way I could manufacture such a product in a financially viable way. It would be cool to see what other innovative solutions the community can come up with.