FEATURED Project Workspace

Hello folks! This is my next project appropriately named "Project Work Space." The goal here is to give myself some additional work space to work on various electronic projects, as well as some study space when I start school again in a year or so. The rough idea was inspired by this man's project - http://translate.google.com/transla...ring.tweakers.net/forum/list_messages/1420280. What I would eventually like to have is a nice, large, heavy duty desk with the PC integrated for space saving and noise reduction. It's also a nice way to practice up on my welding.

I will say that I'm not a huge fan of all the "bling" he has, but I really like the concept. I also have a pretty limited budget, so the hardware isn't going to be incredible. Now with that said here is the project so far.

The first thing I decided was that I wanted to have this be a standing height desk. After having used one at one of my client's offices I fell in love. The standing height really seems to help my posture and keep me more awake. I decided I wanted it all the same height and I can build a new chair for the height if need be.

Now I needed to figure out how big it needs to be. I finally settled with a standard desk depth of 30". The space I wanted to put the desk in is almost exactly 10' but I wanted to leave some space for a tall and narrow book shelf so I figured 110" with mounting tabs extending out to 112" this makes it exactly 7' long with 16" on-center studs. I would have loved to use the giant aluminum square tube the other guy used for his but my budget simply won't allow it. I also don't have the equipment or ability to weld aluminum yet . For mine I used 1"x2" .120 wall rectangular steel tube. This is going to get heavy .

Steel stacked in the garage:

Total cost of steel was around $100 for 44 feet.

The desk will have a rectangular frame with a wood insert that sits flush with the steel frame and will be support by some gussets and legs with mounting tabs. Unlike my previous welding project I wanted to try making a some more difficult welds than just 90 degree butt joints. I don't have a hot saw so making the cuts takes some patience with a Sawz-All and some cleaning up with grinder. It can be done though!

Cut:


Only the "front" corners will be mated 45 degree cuts. Where the support legs tie I used a 90 butt joint because the weld will never be seen and this is just a bit easier.


Here the support leg has been welded and ground already but the gusset now need to be attached. I used some strong magnets to help hold the gusset in place while I welded it in.


Here we have 2 identical end legs. The ends pointed down have been cut at 45 degrees to match the front bar.


With the back crossmember in:


One side of the front crossmember in: may not look like it but welds are mush improved over my previous projects. They will still need to be touched up with the grinder but it won't take much.


I needed to get the mounting tabs made so I cut 6 tabs 2.5"x1" from some 3/16" plate, cleaned up the edges a bit and drilled mounting holes. These are welded to the support legs and are lag bolted to the studs in the wall.


Here is the whole thing fabbed up and ready to hang:

In this form it weighs almost 90 pounds!

This is the space it will be going in. The hanging shelf is too low and will have to go:


I had to get my neighbor to come over and help lift it up and hold it in place while I bolted it in. You can see the aluminum angle I cut and screwed the the insdie rail to support the wood top. The angle aluminum is 1"x1" and held with metal screws. They around mounted every 12" along each rail 3/4" from the top edge to allow for the 3/4 particle board that will be the desktop:



Shortly after this picture disaster struck. One of the lags bolts sheared off so half the desk crashed to the ground leaving some nice scratches and tweaking the mounts. I've gotten it pretty straightened out now but I had to mount the desk 2 inches lower to avoid the broken half of the bolt still in the wall. It now sits at 46" high which I still find to be quite comfortable.

I still need to build the recess in the top for the PC but I'll need something to mount the motherboard, cards, and power supply. I decided to hack up an old empty PC case I had lying around. It was all scratched up anyway.


After drilling out all the rivets and removing a screws I am left with this:

After some cutting and cleaning with the grinder and file I am left with this:

this:

And these:


Now I need to cut the hole in the top for the recess. Here it is with the cut pieces ready for install. The opening is 25"x11.375" and is 8.5" deep. All the side pieces of the recess are 5/8" particle board. The bottom is 3/4" recycled from the piece cut from the opening:

Here is the back plate opening and the plate attached.


The sides are attached with wood glue and 2" brad nails.

Here are the sides put together with the bottom in and the seams sealed up. You can see the opening for the radiator to the left and an opening for a fan on the right. I may end up putting 2 fans on the side but with the back exhaust fan already in there I'd have negative pressure with the 2 rad fans pulling in. I'll see how it holds temps with the 1 and go from there.:


After a couple coats of metallic black and with the motherboard plate and radiator in:



Motherboard installed - MSI P7NGM - Digital, Q6600 G0 @ 2.9Ghz and 6GB of PC5300:


My trusty GTS 250 @ stock for now. Once this project is done I'll start playing with it a bit . You can also see the SATA cables running back under the motherboard towards the drive cage area.


This is with the "new" 8400GS I just acquired and the WinTV HVR-1800 that I scavenged from a dead HP media center. Not much room there...



You probably have noticed that I have a total of 3 video cards here. This is for a reason . I happened upon some Samsung 214T 21" 4:3 LCDs that didn't work. The owner said I can just have them so she does not have to worry about throwing them away. Well, I got lucky and found out they have a common capacitor problem that fixes them most of the time. After replacing the 6 caps on the first one and making sure it worked correctly, I picked the parts to fix another 3 but they only had enough for 2. Once those other caps come in I can add a 4th one for a total of 5. This gives me a massive work space to layout schematics, have articles open, play media, watch TV, and I have the Samsung 2494 widescreen I already had to play games on.

Here is a snapshot of the set up so far.

You can see the power supply cables and hard drives laying on the desk. This is still very much a work in progress so stay tuned. In the next couple days I should be able to get the other LCD fixed, the water cooling installed (Thanks Ifmu!), and cables cleaned up. I also need to modify the hard drive brackets and get a few fans as well as get the LCDs mounted on the wall.

Got the water cooling together and testing now. I've got a bit of a throwback waterblock that I found in my parts drawer and got a sweet deal on a rad/pump so I just had to come up with a mounting bracket for the 775. The water block was originally designed for the 462 socket. I re-used 2 of the rear panel expansion slot covers and cut them down to length. They were near perfect width to fit on the block. The straps bolts through the 775 mount from my old Thermaltake HSF.



Here is the planned location of the Laing pump and 120.2 radiator. All fittings are 1/2" and will have hose clamps. I haven't decided on clear or opaque tubing and color.


And here's the mess while the system bleeds.


Apparently, The system this equipment was in previously had a red dye in it. So I get to try the red color for free it seems . I also found out the hard way that without a HSF the 730i north bridge overheats badly. For now I have a 120 leaning on but will have to come up with a more permanent solution. Cooling performance is not bad with the Q6600 @ 2.9Ghz and 1.32V idling at 36 or so with one low speed fan on the rad. Load gets to around 48C-50C. Not too bad for a 10 year old block .

That's a pretty sweet desk you have going on there

Me likes

Look great. Are you putting particle board on top of the PC too? Or some sort of glass/acrylic?

CompuTamer said:

Me likes

Look great. Are you putting particle board on top of the PC too? Or some sort of glass/acrylic?

Click to expand...

I have a sheet of laminate that will cover the particle board and a glass insert that will cover the PC area.

Alrighty, the laminate is done . This is the first time I've done it and I have to say, It wasn't that bad. The laminate is a faux granite with some metal flake in it. I think it's looks nice with the the light metallic of the black paint. After getting the laminate on I can see that I will have to drop the supports just a bit to get the top level with the rails again. I should be able to just back out the metal screws and brackets and drop them one at a time and let the top fall into place. I also need to find my smaller hole saw to get the hole on the top cut for the monitor/keyboard/mouse cables.

Laminate on dowels until I have the placement right:


Here it is once the the dowels are removed, the contact cement is set and the edge is routed off. The laminate sheet is 8'1"x4'1" and the wood area is 28"x8' so I trimmed off one whole side. I got the router for $25 at harbor freight but the damn bits were $35!


I made some minor adjustments to the watercooling loop while it was out (2 longer lines and pump mounted a bit higher) and it's bleeding again overnight. Here's a pic of it up and running again. The cables have cleaned up a bit but I'll need to make some custom length fan power cables to get them out of the way. You can also see the hard drives have been mounted (74GB Raptor and 320GB WD SATA):


I'm hoping to get the wiring cleaned up and the monitors mounted over the weekend.

Friday finally...I got the hole drilled in the middle of the desk for the monitor/speaker cables and wired it all up. Success!



If all goes according to plan tomorrow I should be able to get the monitors hung and the cables hidden. We'll see if that happens...

Good evening folks. I was able to get the monitor mounts built and hung but didn't have long enough cables to get them hidden. Here is the progress so far.

I think this is about the simplest wall mount possible for a small screen. It starts with a length of 1" .060 wall square tube. I measured up the total length of monitors gave my self a few extra inches. I came up with a length of 90" for 5 screens. I then drilled 5/16" holes along the length of tube where the center of each mount would bolt in. After cleaning up the holes I gave it a coat of matte black Rustoleum.


Now I need the rods that will protrude out from the mounting rail. These are 3/4" .060 wall square tube. They are 3" long and the mounting hole are 5/16" and are 1/2" from one end.


For the actual mounting plate I copied one of the mounts I got with one of the monitors.



After removing the screws I am left with the flat plate. I ground off the factory paint to prep it for welding. I don't see a need to build one from scratch if I don't have to . Before attaching the mounting rod I used it create a layout on some 3/4"x1/8" plates. This way I have the correct spacing for each one . They will be arranged in a X shape and will be welded together at the center. The 24" screen required a slightly different mount as the mounting bolt pattern on the screen is rectangular instead of square. It's the same basic design with different leg lengths.


After cutting the pieces to length and drilling the mounting holes I set up a simple jig using the back off the monitor I haven't fixed yet. The scorch marks will be hidden by the plastic cover once it's back together.



I used the magnets again to hold the mounting rods in place while I weld them.



Now I had to get the long mounting rail up. I found the studs and equally spaced out three 2-3/4" x 5/16" lag bolts. The rail is mounted so that the top of the rail is 12" above the desk surface. I just had to play with the monitors on their stands to come to a height I liked.


After the matte black dried on the monitor mounts it's time to bolt them up!


They are mounted to the long rail using 2-1/4" x 5/16" bolts with a washer and nut. If I had a tap and die set I'd tap the hole but alas, the budget doesn't allow for it. This method is simple, works, and is dirt cheap. Here we have all the monitors hung.





I obviously need to get the cables cleaned up still, and get the last monitor fixed and hung, but the idea is starting to come through. . We'll see what tomorrow brings.

It's a nice Saturday for an update . First, My capacitors came in for the bad screen! Instructions for replacing the bad caps are available here: http://www.ccl-la.com/LCDrepair4.htm as well as a few other websites. Just google for "Samsung 214T repair". I get a chance to use my new desk space for something useful .


After replacing the caps I had to put it back together so I now I had to clean up the back panel I used for the mount template.

The burn marks are from welding the mounts up. No permanent damage done and you won't see any discoloration with the plastics back on anyway. I went over the metal frame with a metal brush and magnet to pick up any little bits.

With that done and tested (success!) It's time to hang it!

Two things are now apparent to me. The middle monitor is not as centered as I like which makes the wallpaper no line up correctly and all the hanging cables need to get cleaned up.

I went back and picked up some extra washers and some 3" 5/16" bolts. I needed longer bolts to work with extra washer spacing needed to get the monitor lined up correctly. While I was remounting the middle monitor I came up with the idea of recessing the outside monitors about 3/4" and tilting them in slightly. This way the OUTSIDE edge of "middle" monitors covers the INSIDE edge of the outer monitor effectively halving the size of the border between screen when viewed from the center. I used zip ties to bundle and clean up the cables from the desktop. I like the completed arrangement after getting everything leveled.


You can see under the desk I now have my Dish Network receiver hooked up. It is connected directly to the center monitor using an HDMI-DVI adaptor for glorious HD . The monitor is connect via VGA to the PC. The center is also the primary display. The audio from the Dish box is run to the PC using it's line-in so I can control volume using the Z-5500s. I took a wlk to Radio Shack to look at some cable bundling ties. I got lucky and they had a 50 pack on clearance for 97 cents . Here is the bundling job so far. I am going to need to build a shelf to hold the sub and Dish receiver so they haven't been permanently mounted yet. The lone hanging cord is one of the speaker wires. It is stretched to its maximum so has to hang until I get the sub mounted.



Here's a little bit better picture of the monitor mounts.


I'm still slowly cleaning up the wiring in the PC. If I am industrious enough I'll get some pictures of it up tonight.

Wow, impressive work! Looks great!

As promised, here are some pics after getting the fans painted and mounted and most the wiring cleaned up. 3 of the fans are from my "old" Antec Nine Hundred case. They are 120mm made with clear plastic, they have blue LEDs in them and they have a 3 speed selector. I painted them using a white plastic spray dye. Initially I was very disappointed to see that the dye actually pulls away from the edges of the plastic. I applied several coats but it kept doing it. I decided to plug one in and see how it looks anyway.

As it turns out it creates a kind of "Tron" outline effect that I really like . I tried the dye on all 4 fans and it did it exactly the same thing on all of them. Here's a good shot of one installed.


Here's where the hard drive cage goes. I had to remove it to install the last fan. The PSU and drive power cables are all tucked under the cage and around the back side of the power supply.

Different AngleL


Here it is with the drive caged re-installed and fan in:

Closer up:

From the side closest to the fan:


Here are just a bunch of "bling" shots. Sorry the quality isn't great, I'm still figuring out night mode .
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That's all for tonight I think...

dang, there was that much of the red dye still in the pump and rad?
sorry about that, hadn't really thought of that before i sold them to you.

good to see those and that video card being put to use finally! lol

it's looking good

The tron effect is very cool, I think the paint job turned out accidentally great there.

That looks awesome!

What's the plan for the left end of the desk? And, is the computer going to be covered when it's all done?

That monitor setup is really nice, I've fixed a bunch of broken LCD's, but I've never been lucky enough to get a bunch of the same brand/model. I would try to get 1 more and go for a 6 monitor setup, with 2 rows of 3, especially with the vertical space you have there.

Great job, I think it's awesome that you made pretty much everything from scratch. Welding is definitely a good skill to have!

I believe he's covering the computer with a glass insert. Pretty cool.

I haven't settled on what to do for the left end yet. I like the idea of glass or cork. It's a 12" opening. Once payday comes I'll have the glass insert ordered. I still need to figure out a finish for the edges.

looks good so far, loving the multi screen set up!

I like the way you mounted the screens on the wall, I have had 2 screens mounted on the wall before that we slightly out of line, really wound me up, having them all mounted the way you have looks very tidy.

Subed, looking fw to seeing the end result.

Some amazing work done here loving all those screens

Nice metal work man, why did you use such thick wall box tubing? Looks like 1/4" wall thick you got there, although might just be the pics.

DjWolf37 said:

Nice metal work man, why did you use such thick wall box tubing? Looks like 1/4" wall thick you got there, although might just be the pics.

Click to expand...

Thank you. When I went to pick up the metal they were out of the thinner wall stuff. I think it was only $4 more for the thicker wall and as a bonus it's much harder to blow a hole through it with the welder. I have no doubt you could park a car on the thing .

Sorry there haven't been any updates recently I ran into a bit of financial hardship but I think things are starting to look up. Hopefully I will have everything sorted by christmas time.