Makita T-02571 Customizable Foam Insert for Interlocking Cases

First off, the cons. I hate to compare brands, but I’m also on the Milwaukee platform. The Packout foam is *much* more customizable simply because you can easily peel off the layers that you need for your tools. The Makita foam does not allow layers to be grooved out. Because of the precut grids on the Makita foam that mandates you to remove the whole perforated cube, you are extremely limited to your customization. Also, the removal of precut cubes of foam makes for an unattractive solution for any rounded parts of a tool like a Makita grinder. The Milwaukee Packout foam is much more user and tool-friendly. Lastly, the price of the Makita foam is too high especially for a janky solution that comes out looking horrible. The pros? Well, the foam came packaged nicely.

This product is overpriced and should be included with Makita sustainer-like hard cases at no extra charge. I purchased Makita a hard case, found it had absolutely nothing in it, so I ordered this recommended companion foam product to help fit a Makita planer into the large size plastic tool box. This foam insert is too soft and spongey and also it is also very short. I don’t think it would hold up over time and I don’t see it cradling a somewhat heavy tool very well. I ended up using part of the original cardboard box that was cutout to hold the tool instead. I cut it down to fit the hard case, it doesn’t move and keeps the tool from tumbling around loose in the container.

Makita’s tool storage system design is poor. A super soft and shallow “pluck it to fit” foam insert just doesn’t cut it. Festool tools that I’ve purchased come with Sustainer boxes and have custom blow-molded hard plastic tool holder inserts which is a far superior way to store tools in modular toolboxes.

unlike some of the kaizen inserts for packout or other organizational systems these makita made inserts for their storage boxes actually fit and are easy no cutting required to fit your tools, i use this as my track saw just came with a plastic insert and i wanted to better protect the base and this product does just that.

So this foam is made to secure equipment in a particular case. I did not have that case or equipment. I had purchased a universal charger for laptops, with assorted tips, and I wanted a kit to hold it. I bought a large clear plastic pencil box with a handle on it, and this foam I used to make an insert. The single layer went on the bottom and the thick stuff on the top. I cut the edges to fit snugly, and then removed the bits I did not need to hold the charger, cable and tips.

Everything worked perfectly.

This company should make a generic version of this for assorted uses. It would also be nice if they would have put a horizontal cut through the material so you could remove what you don’t need but leave a nice thick cushion on the bottom.

In any case, it worked perfectly for what I needed and I would purchase it again if I need to make anything similar in the future.

Note, I do find it a little expensive for a piece of foam.

to be honest it fit very well but I just don’t much like it it’s very soft and to try and make it a bit tougher I sprayed it with plastidip but the foam cells are very open and it just doesn’t look right I’ll give it a while longer and if it doesn’t hold up I’ll replace it with the foam from Can-tire that I will have to cut to fit myself but seems better foam.Edit I tossed it.

If you use the Makita interlocking cases as I do, these foam trays are an absolute must-have – so much so that I’m both surprised and disappointed that the cases aren’t just priced up a bit and come with the foam included. The good points are that these do fit the cases well, and the shapes do pluck out easy. The bad points are first and most heavily the absurd price (seriously, ten bucks would have been about right, and still a huge profit). The odd shape of the case interior (and thus this foam) heavily limits the usable space, especially if you want foam between tools and the outer case walls. Only coming in one thickness limits things a bit, and it’s a real shame that there isn’t a foam layer sold or included for the top of the case (which does exist, and is mounted in the contractor sets).

Much of those complaints are as tied to the cases as this foam insert, but the price issue is with this product alone – the cases are very reasonable by comparison, cheaper to buy the case than the foam.

I was looking to use the foam to fit around a 130mm telescope tube and the pluckable design was super easy to work with. Tip: cut out your design on paper to align it to the square grid of the foam and find which to remove.