Here’s what the Kids’ Desk looks like after Wiring the LED Strip Lighting:
Custom “Floating” Shelf Organizer Design & Build:
Here’s my design of a paper organizer that is made to sit on the same brackets that clip-into the standards.
I had made a version that had its own male parts that clipped into the wall standard slots, but thought it would be more versatile to sit on brackets instead of needing the perfectly spaced wall standards I measured in the kids’s room. No two shelf standards are exactly the same distance apart, it seems.
Fabrication, Design Changes
I had this piece lasered out of 14ga (0.075″ thick, or a little over 1/16″) plate steel. My goal was to have a little piece that was both useful, and didn’t need to be welded. So it’s got extensive slotting and “hooking” tabs to hold itself together. I learned I should have made the hooks more aggressive, so they had more bearing surface. Some of the upright dividers want to “recline” because they’re not being properly “grabbed” by more intrusive hook features. A deeper hook groove would solve that.
As is, the piece is a success, in that it’s functional and the kids like it and use it. But because of the meek hooks (slots) I designed, some parts should be glued up with a spot of epoxy
Some of the slots or holes you’ll see on some plates are there just to cut weight, add a feature hang on paint hooks for powdercoat, and/or to eliminate laser stop-points (as I’ve mentioned in other blogs here, when a laser stops at a sharp corner or end of a cutting path, it can be similar to a pierce point, and those are places more likely to “weld” to itself or have a “blowout” or create some other cutting inconsistency. I try to create plate parts and laserable features with as few sharp points and pierce points as possible. (Design For Manufacturing & Assembly).
Click here for PDF of Assembly Drawing:
ORG100 – Desk organizer shelf and paper sorter
Example of how actual hook profiles that more aggressively grab the mating plates would have been better for requiring no glue or fasteners. Then this design would truly be flat-packable for shipping and re-flatpackable for moving or storage.
At least the kids really seem to use it and like it. I brought it home and showed it to them and then kind of beat up on my design because the hooks weren’t as good as I liked, but they wanted it installed. Notice the cutouts that hold their pencil buckets.
That’s about it…
I threw this post together because I learned a few tricks from researching LED strip lighting and using shelf brackets as a work center, so hopefully you’ve got something out of it too. Feel free to comment or email if you have a question or suggestion.
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