Hi, is anyone doing half sized grid beams 20mm? If so what hole size? and are you still using furniture barrelnuts?
Johannes - Sweden
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I haven’t tried this, but I’d imagine that the holes and bolts would be half the size of the holes and bolts in the 40mm beams. I’m using inches so in my case it’d be 5/32” holes and 1/8” bolts.
Whether to use furniture bolts really depends on what you want to make with those smaller beams, I think. If you are using them for prototyping for instance, furniture bolts are expensive when you could just use cheap hex bolts. I’d be surprised if you can even find furniture bolts that size.
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If I use furniture bolts i looks like I need 6mm holes for a M3 nut. So If that’s not the common solution then I’m going for 4mm holes and looking for other nuts and ways to fastend them. Making the just the holes you need for furniturscrews bigger I always an option 
Hi, I haven’t tried this either, but have long wanted to.
When I visited Phil Jergenson and family, he had a bin of half-sized 3/4" beams made from oak.
I reckon this size is perfect for table-top things, like a laptop stand, headphone holder, light mount, and so on. Also fun to play with, prototype designs, kid-friendly.
As for 20mm grid beam hole size, I’m not sure, I guess you’ll have to prototype to find out. If we could re-use the same hole size and furniture bolts as the 40mm grid beams, with shorter bolts, that’d be easiest, but I’m not sure if that’s structurally sound. Otherwise I think still having larger holes and bolts, relative to grid length, is better than keeping the same proportion as 40mm grid beams.
Another example of bite-sized grid beams is bitbeam: 8mm grid beams with 4.8mm holes.
Now 3d printable with a catalog of parts.
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My thoughts would be to make 2020 grid beam compatible with 2020 v slot (see pic below), so 6mm holes would work. You could still use most of the 4040 grid beam hardware as we’re using m6 bolts (so the tolerances aren’t too tight) on larger structures.
I haven’t seen m6 furniture bolts but they probably exist…
With m6 holes the 2020 would be compatible with 4040 holes + an M6 threaded Insert. Would be easier to combine both that way.
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Yeah also thinking, tabletop, prototype, kids and portable stuff like toolCase and backpackframe kind of stuff. If you go metal it might hold more load with 8mm holes but i im also reluctant to change proportions as i don’t want to lose the GB impression the 6 mm suggested is a good idea, to connect with a furniture nut on the full size side and let the 6mm screw extend trough the halfsize to be fastened with a regular nut or likewise or sandwich a half sized between two regular ones sharing the same screw.
It’s going to take a few experimental pieces to se how it feels
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I have yet to enter the world of v-slot beams but i can really se how it i opens a lot of posibilitys when combining the two. 
The 20mm (6mm holes) looks pretty sweet to me. 
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Yeah I think that’s the one
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