Project: The Ultimate Computer Desk

So forward to see this when it's done. Good luck

Amazing i cant wait for the finished product

derekimo said:

Nice work, you should put this all together in a book when you're done.
Lots of good pics too.

Thanks deremiko, cool idea

Lordbob75 said:

Looks really good so far. Doing great work.
~Lordbob

Thanks Lordbob75 :)

Golden said:

Nice. What sort of wood stain are you going to use? Presumably something that doesn't give off any fumes as the heat builds up inside the drawers with the components in them?

That's an interesting comment - I had not considered that the heat from the components may cause the finish to offgas.. I'll have to do some research and get back to you on that one!

sygnus21 said:

So forward to see this when it's done. Good luck

crazyeyeschase said:

Amazing i cant wait for the finished product

Thanks sygnus21 and crazyeyeschase! (Lol, it's fun typing out your name, crazyeyeschase!)

Here's a quick, small update for those of you ~waiting in anticipation~ oooooohhh!

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

Golden said:

Very nice - decent tools too (Dewalt)

Thanks Golden - the guy who owns the shop has been collecting and using tools for something like 20 years. All his "early versions" of his tools are now sitting at the cottage and other relatives place I DO really like the Dewalt stuff a lot myself as well.

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!

Six9siX said:

Great work
The most difficult part for me was motherboard tray and I/O parts
but one at the time
You can cut from some metal sheet for PSU easiest part
I/O & PCI card used from old case (but it can be re manufactured)
Motherboard tray was made from scratch with a loot of blueprints /photoshop
and old mini atx and atx board so it can be reused if I put another mboard in without need of new holes.

That looks like you did a great job of making those parts from scratch, Six9siX - what tools did you use to cut the sheet metal? You'll see below that I pretty much mangled the pieces - I will likely order ACTUAL I/O Panels and Motherboard trays...

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!