A couple of weeks ago I came up with the idea of building a cabinet/table/storage thing for my 3D printer. Its aim was to solve a couple of things: Stability, its original table moves around quite a bit when making fast small moves and I wanted to reduce these vibrations. Temperature, as winter is coming I wanted to reduce drafts and try and keep the print bed enclosed and warm to help with the printing. Storage, I wanted somewhere to store the filament and laptop that goes with the printer. On the week leading up to the weekend I had free I came up with some plans for building a table with enclosed cupboard below a fixed back and perspex sides which opened up while the lid and front would be removable perspex panels. On Saturday I started by building the back panel and then the cupboard, it was at this point I realised this wasn't going to go to plan! I decided to build this out of 9mm ply and reinforce with a 2x1" frame, unfortunately this wasn't strong enough and the whole thing had a lot more flex to it than I wanted. The back panel which supports all the upper components flexed too much. The next day I finished off the main body and then cut the sides and cupboard doors and gave it a rough coat of paint. Over the next two weeks when I had the time I spend a couple of hours an evening finishing it off, I changed the way the main side panels were hinged, made a lid and fitted the hardware. Most of the two weeks were spent giving it coats of paint as parts such as the lid and sides needed several coats on each side. The one part I wasn't expecting to work was the pneumatic lift on the lid, I needed some way to hold the lid up so I tried out a lift used on top opening cupboard doors, this part of the build worked perfectly! I gave the cabinet a final spray of paint on the Saturday two weeks after starting and then moved it in on the Sunday. This project didn't go entirely to plan and it certainly didn't take a weekend. I was overambitious with the perspex sides but I did achieve what I set out to make. Time will tell if it's strong enough. There are a couple of pictures below but the full album can be found on Google+
