Scratch Build - The Ultimate Computer Desk

[ultimatedesk]

Hello Hexus.net!

I've been a long time browser, but this is my first time posting because I've started a new scratch build project, a project to create the Ultimate Computer Desk

I'd like to firstly thank Crucial, Kingston and Danger Den for sponsoring this project and for helping to make this a reality:







I've been planning this for quite some time, so I hope you enjoy all the pictures and descriptions in the next few months.

The Ultimate Computer Desk:
- 2 Integrated Computers
- Support for 3 27" Monitors
- Fan, Noise, and Dust Control
- High Quality, Built to Last

My Google Sketchup Plans:











And the cut sheets for the project (Everything will be made of 3/4" plywood):









Yes! The desk is 8' long. Yes! It will weight a ton. Yes! It will be modular so I can actually move it around

Stay tuned! Hope you enjoy, and I always appreciate any feedback you have! I'll be back soon with more pictures from the wood shop

[peterb]

One of the more unusual modding threads!

Welcome to HEXUS.

[miXer]

Welcome to Hexus!

I agree with the guy above^ however I'm rather intrigued of what the final outcome is going to be, good luck with project:]

[kalniel]

Vibrations/resonance are going to be key things to control, I'd also try and make it as easy to upgrade as possible - PCs go out of date so quickly.

[oolon]

I noticed there were alot of drives in the mock up pictures, its going to need quite some fans to keep that cool, and then something to keep it quiet.

[ultimatedesk]

One of the more unusual modding threads!

Welcome to HEXUS.

Welcome to Hexus!

I agree with the guy above^ however I'm rather intrigued of what the final outcome is going to be, good luck with project:]

Vibrations/resonance are going to be key things to control, I'd also try and make it as easy to upgrade as possible - PCs go out of date so quickly.

I noticed there were alot of drives in the mock up pictures, its going to need quite some fans to keep that cool, and then something to keep it quiet.

Thanks for the welcome, and the positive comments! I always appreciate that, which is why I'll keep coming back with more updates!

I agree, kalniel, that vibrations / resonance are going to be a major part of the project. I plan on experimenting with various packing foams, and other closed-cell type padding from the local hardware store. I'm pretty confident I'll be able to find something suitable to dampen any issues.

oolon, I did put a lot of drives there, which demonstrates its ~potential~ capacity - I will likely actually only have 3 or 4 drives there to begin with for one, and then secondly, it will be a storage server more than anything else, so the drives will likely be parked or in standby mode almost 80 to 90 percent of the time which will hopefully minimize heat and vibration.

I DO plan on using 4 120mm x 38mm high-powered fans for intakes on both systems, so I think that even if heat were to start to become an issue, there will be sufficient air flow.

Had time to cut that last 8' sheet into the 28" sections, and cut a hole in the surface portion of the desk. The surface portion, fyi, will be composed of two 8' pieces of 3/4" plywood, so its total thickness will be 1.5" thick.

The upper plywood will have a hole that is .5" wider all around than the board beneath it.

Only had time to do one hole tonight - the lower portion, thankfully, because I made a few small mistakes!

Sorry about the photos folks, I had already uploaded these to imageshack and forgot to resize them, so here are the thumbnails since I don't have the original stock photos on me right now. From now on, they'll be properly sized at 800x600, which I feel is a fair compromise for detail and bandwidth.





I started off with a carpenters angle, measured off my lines with a pencil and then made a rough cut with a jigsaw. I then clamped a straight-edge lined up with the edges (measured) and ran a router across it to create the smooth finish.

I messed up a bit, going a bit too far with the router on one end, and then not far enough on the other end - I'll have to sand and file to square it off.

Sorry I didn't take too many pictures - the next hole will have more!







Thankfully the shop is heated, here's one of the heaters - it went down to -8*C that evening!



Here's the mess for the night!





And, the hero of the night! Mastercraft Plunge Router!!

[Fuzzed_out]

This is going to be an awesome one to follow.

[ultimatedesk]

This is going to be an awesome one to follow.

Thanks Fuzzed_out

I was able to spend some time in the shop this weekend, and didn't get as much done as I would have liked to.

One of the main things holding me back right now is the fact that I have not selected the motherboard tray, and template for the motherboard input and outputs, as well as PCI slots. This prevents me from cutting the holes accurately in the back of both of the modules, which prevents me from assembling the actual modules.

I have some "spare" desktop chassis lying around, and will be working to find a solution to that soon.

In the meantime, I started working on the drawers for the right-hand module.

I first took them through the table saw again, trimming off the last 16th or two from some of the boards.

Then went to work sanding all of the pieces down with 150 grit. I will likely go up to a 180 grit before the final stain goes on. I clamped a straight-edge on to the table saw so that it was easier to sand with the grain (Thanks Mike)



Slowly, but surely, I went through all the pieces for the drawers, except for the faces. Yes, bad things happen when I don't have my sketchup drawings. I start drawing with markers.



Mike was doing some work in the shop at the same time as me that day, so there was quite the mess.



I put together my tools of the trade



And here are the gluing steps I went through







A few somewhat artistic clamp shots:





Everything looks pretty straight







Glued and clamped together the largest of the drawers, will likely put some hanging folders in there.









Then I screwed everything together with #8 1.5" screws, all holes pre-drilled and countersunk. Most of the holes will be covered by the actual drawer sliding mechanisms, but the exposed ones will get some wood putty.

It's funny being in someone else's wood shop - I couldn't find the countersink bit anywhere - I tried looking through all the drill bit boxes (There were several) and nothing, so I had been using a small bit, then switching to the big bit to countersink, and then switching to the screw bit to screw in the holes.

Mike walks in half-way through the holes and you could tell he was rather amused - he goes to the back of the shop, pulls out a box, pulls out a box from the box, and then a small medicine container out from the box in a box - "Geez, didn't I tell ya to just look around? Oh. Wait. I guess this one was sorta hard to find eh?".

At that point, he also points out that there are several drills in the shop - silly me. So one drill with the countersink bit, one drill with the screw bit. It's been very interesting working in a shop dedicated to this type of work - very, very different from working in the basement with just basic hand tools.



I haven't attached the faces of the drawers yet as I haven't determined how I would like to attach them. I would also like to attach the trim to the outer edges of the faces before attaching them to the drawers, since it'll be much easier to clamp all the faces together at once.



And that's it for todays update - a bit short, yes, a lot of pictures of clamps, sorry, I got carried away!

I'm spending some time in the shop tonight, so hopefully I'll have another update for all of you tomorrow or the day after!

[ultimatedesk]

I finally got around to putting the second hole in the desk surface area (Since the desk is composed of two sheets of plywood, there are two holes needed, with the "top surface" needing a hole that is .5" larger all the way around, so the "bottom surface" supports the piece of glass which covers the gaming computer).

I took a few more detailed pictures compared to last time.

As with before, I started by cutting out a rough shape with the jigsaw. I was able to get within .5" comfortably of my marked lines. Sometimes if you rush the jigsaw, your cuts can get a little squirrely, so I was playing it safe. This is the top surface, so no screwing up here!!



I then took an extra dose of patience, and went in straight to the corners with the jigsaw. This is a step I did not take last time, and I made a mistake with the router because of this.









I then took the router and pressed the bit right into the corner, and clamped a straight-edge on behind it. This is how I set the distance from the bit to the straight-edge. I repeated the same for the other side.

All it took was a good solid pass from right-to-left and I had a very clean straight edge without having to go all the way into the corners, where mistakes can be made, since it is quite difficult to see where the actual router bit is when the tool is running.







Unclamp, reset router, reset clamps and straight edge, lather, rinse, and repeat:





This hole had a very small margin of error overall, and I am very pleased with the result. The jigsaw is an incredible versatile tool and can be very accurate, as long as you have patience. This one corner is the only one that will need a touch-up with a file and/or sandpaper, and you can see, it's only going to need less than a 16th of material removal!



And that's all I had time for in the shop that day Enjoy some of my mess!





Until next time - I have some images in the queue, but I haven't quite gotten around to resizing them just yet

[ultimatedesk]

Hey everyone, it's been a little while since my last update, so here are a few snapshots. As some of you might know, I've been a little held back in the project due to not having selected my motherboard I/O plates and motherboard trays. Without having the actual items, I couldn't make the appropriate measurements to make cut-outs in the back of the cabinets, and therefore, was unable to make the dado cuts due to worry about everything not fitting properly.

So I scrounged through some old desktop systems I had lying around, emptied their components into my bins, and decided to take apart their chassis in search of some good motherboard tray and I/O parts.

So - off to the spooky basement with a pair of chassis, my trusty drill and dremel.





Having never drilled rivets out of a case before, I wasn't entirely sure what to expect. At first, I started with a bit that was a little bit small, so the rivets came up onto the drill bit itself and got stuck on there pretty good. Eventually, I moved to a bigger bit, and all it took was one good squeeze of the trigger and the rivet would come right out nice and cleanly.





Starting to rack up some parts here



You can see in the image above that the I/O and PCI Plate is built right into the back of the desktop chassis - this is unfortunate, as you'll see in some future photos, my other case actually had a modular I/O plate. I'll have to take the dremel to that part to get what I need.

Time to grab the pliers...



Here is the shot of the back plate of the other desktop chassis - see how the I/O plate was actually riveted in, and not pressed as a whole back sheet like the other one? Soo much easier to deal with.



That was a pretty fun experience taking apart the cases. I've got a bunch of scrap sheet metal now too - wonder what interesting projects I can come up with to use them...

On to that first I/O plate - I need to dremel out the section that I need



Huh.. that actually didn't work out too well, at least, not the way I would like. I'm going to take these parts to the shop to see if there are any better tools for getting nice clean lines.

Until next time!

[vicar]

Looks good, can't wait to see the final product. Keep up the good work.

[Georgy291]

bookmarked for future developments / comments

looks good so far

[ultimatedesk]

Looks good, can't wait to see the final product. Keep up the good work.

bookmarked for future developments / comments

looks good so far

Thanks both of you - I can't wait for the finished product as well lol!

I had some time to take those motherboard tray and I/O Plates to the shop to try out a few tools / techniques for shaping them into something I actually like.

First off, yes, Mike and I tried using the nice Dewalt Jigsaw, but the Mastercraft metal blades we were trying to use just wouldn't stay in the darn clamp. It would cut like butter for maybe 10 seconds and then bam, the blade would fall out of the bottom of the jigsaw onto the ground. Not sure what was going on there.



Next up, we tried this neat little Mastercraft oscillating tool with a metal blade as well, but no such luck. Couldn't figure out a good way to clamp down the metal tray, so it just vibrated it like crazy instead of actually cutting.





Our next contestant was an air compressor powered cutting wheel, which, was ultimately less accurate than the dremel, and just as slow.



So we took out the big gun, the sawzall.



Ha, no, just kidding. It wouldn't work even a tiny bit for a piece like this.

In the end, you know what ultimately worked the best?



Yeah, a hacksaw. Go figure.

Anyways, here you can see my mangled I/O plate for the motherboard. It's not a pretty sight at all in my opinion.



This is the nice I/O plate that I didn't even have to do anything except drill out a few rivets.



I think I'm going to have to come up with a better solution for this. We'll see shortly

Hope everyone who is getting snow is enjoying it, I know here in Ottawa, it's been a pretty crazy few days!

Stay tuned for more updates, will be spending some time in the shop this week and working with WOOD!

[ultimatedesk]

I had a bit of time in the shop this week to work on getting my drawers up to speed. I decided to take the advice of a fellow forum member and add "false fronts" to my drawers so that I can attach the "real fronts" using screws by screwing from the inside of the drawer, so I wouldn't have any screw heads to cover up on the outside.

Here they are, with my roughed out false fronts - I happened to have 3 pieces of wood almost exactly the size I needed.



Time to take out 'ol trusty



A quick test fit, and all 3 fit perfectly





Add a bit of glue, and some trusty clamps, and we've got ourselves the beginnings of some false fronts!







All 3 of them fit rather nicely. I think they helped square out the drawers overall as well (Even though they were only out of square by around 1/16th of an inch).

So, I've got some time for the glue to dry. I'm not sure if anyone can remember this, but in my original cut sheets, I had planned on cutting out a specific piece of wood using the wood that I jigsawed out of the desk surface.

Here's that piece:



Not, exactly.... square..




So I take this nice little protractor attached to a table saw slide - it's set at 90, so here we go!



I do 2 sides, and then use the actual table saw fence to square out the other 2, but something just doesn't seem right..





It's not really square. What's going on here?



Aha! Looks like the protractor was a little bit off, resulting in a shape one step closer to a diamond as opposed to a square. After a bit of readjustment, I redid that bit and cut it to size - it's the drawer face for the large drawer.



Now that the glue is settled, I decided to throw a few screws into the false fronts.





Awesome. And solid too!



Now, this is kind of embarrassing, but I had to go back and fix a mistake I made in my initial cuts. This piece of wood was supposed to be 20" x 28", but it ended up being more like 19.8" x 28". It may not seem like much, but this is the back piece to the left-hand cabinet. I would have to adjust the width of all 3 shelves if I were to continue using this, and I've got the space already pretty tightly packed with computer components on the top shelf.

So... don't do this at home, just cut a new piece of wood (I didn't want to cut into a new sheet of 4x8 just for this one piece...)

This piece looks like a good fit...







No one will see it, because it'll be in the back, but you will all know. So... let's just forget that ever happened, ok?

[ultimatedesk]

I decided it was time to glue the two surfaces together that would comprise of the actual desk surface and take a break from working on the drawers for a while.

Here it is, the first piece. At first I wanted to lay it face down, so I could evenly distribute screws through the bottom, but in the end, I went face up so I would protect the surface, and it would be a LOT easier to line up the holes.



I threw on the top layer, lined them up, and thought to myself: Hmm, I wonder what it'll look like with the top shelf stacked on:



Pretty cool. This was the first time I had actually pulled a chair up to it to get a real grasp of how big this desk is going to be. I was pretty psyched.

Just a note, the two pieces of wood on each end holding up the shelf will actually be the inner supports (ie, pushed inwards towards the middle of the desk a foot or two), and the cubby holes on the outer ends will support the long shelf. The long shelf also has to be trimmed a couple inches, it won't reach right to the end of the desk.



This next part was really quite a challenge on my own.

I lined it up as best as I could (According to the holes that I cut out, since the edges are easy to trim later), lifted one end with a mighty, strong arm, squirted as much glue as I could with my other arm (And only as far as I could reach!), put it down gently, ran to the other side and repeated.

Let me tell you - with the amount of glue I put down, and the fact that each side weighs 20-30 pounds - it did NOT want to slide around easily to get into perfect position.

In the end, I had to muscle it around a bit to get the holes lined up satisfactorily.

(I spoke with a couple friends about this afterward, and one of them suggested making some pilot holes and screwing in a few screws BEFORE the gluing, and then retracting the screws so that just the tips go through the bottom board. That way after the glue is put down, you shuffle around the top board until the tips of the screws find the pilot holes, thus, eliminating the issue of getting proper alignment before the glue becomes too tacky.)

I then threw some weight on top of the table, attached as many clamps as I could find, and started putting some 1.25" screws through the bottom.



A few clamp shots of the hole - everything lined up pretty much perfect. 1/2" on the left and right, 1/2" at the bottom, and I think just a little under 3/4" at the top. (The size of the lip between the upper and lower holes)









I wasn't satisfied with the way the clamping was going on lengthwise on the surface. I didn't have enough clamps to place them every half foot, so luckily, Mike had some of these nice, big, cedar logs lying around that I re-purposed temporarily.











The end result turned out quite nicely. The hole was lined up properly. There is only a small overhang / underhang of maybe 2/16's of an inch on two of the edges of the surfaces that should be easy to correct with a flush-bit on the router later.

We'll take a look at them next update! Thanks for staying tuned!

[Terbinator]

Wow. Reminds me of my design tech days at school, just ten times more awesome.