Day 68, My DIY Storage/Utility Cabinet
As I may have mentioned before, I am not the most organized individual. In fact, at this very moment I cannot find a three prong electrical plug cord that I ordered from Amazon just a few days, and for some reason also seem to be missing the AC adapter for my aged Lenovo laptop. Grumble. But I do collect a large number of small parts, including a lot of radio and electronic parts. Organizing these parts is kind of annoying, and I have a lot of them. I have found that plastic divided trays that can be locked shut to be useful, but to be organized, they need to have a central location where they can live.
So a couple of years ago, I cobbled together this storage/utility cart out of some OSB that I had lying around, and screwed some casters on the bottom so I could wheel it around.
I made up the dimensions pretty much at the work bench. The parts storage cases are from Harbor Frieght, and list for about $10 each, but I got most of them with the various coupon sales that Harbor Freight has from time to time. There are better cases around to be sure, but it is hard for me to justify the cost of something like the Sortimo boxes that various high profile Youtubers seem to prefer.
It's nothing special. I took one of the storage cases, and measured it for width, and then figured out how much vertical spacing I need. I then built a simple box, and then created some spacers that I could use to position the rails. Some glue and a brad nailer, and in an hour or so (I'm still pretty slow at wood working), bingo! We are done.
There is one small problem though, and it arises from my use of the Harbor Freight cases. The quality control of these cases aren't particularly good. In particular, some of the cases are actually a little bit wider (like 1/4" wider) than others. If you look at the picture, you'll see that a couple aren't all the way in. That is because they are actually really a tight fit. It's collosally annoying. You think that the dimensions would be uniform. I did see that some of the ones I bought had a different label than the others, which suggests to me that perhaps they were from a different batch/manufactured on a different date/by a different manufacturer entirely. Had I tested the original dimensions against my complete set of parts cases, I probably would have added another 1/8" or maybe even 1/4" and I wouldn't have this problem. Some day I might remake them.
But the storage cabinet isn't precious. If you loo to the left, you'll see that I mounted a small surplus HP mini pc to the side by 3D printing a bracket and just screwing it into the side. On the right I added a large power strip so I could power more things. On top I 3D printed a little webcam bracket so I could do video conferencing from the shop. And above I have a surplus Walmart TV that I use for a monitor.
Frankly, it's all a mess. I was kind of embarrassed to show it, but it is useful, and while perhaps calling it a "gem" might be pushing it, it is at least "a diamond in the rough", or an idea that has proven to be useful and may get reworked at some time in the future.
Happy Monday all!