At my workplace we have a small electronics workshop where students can get help with projects, borrow equipment, buy tools and order components. They wanted to make their physical space a little more visible with a sign that described what they are doing. Instead of electronics workshop they are know by the name ELAB for electronics laboratory.

DESIGN

After a small brainstorm with my colleagues I got the task to design something that would make people recognize the place only by looking at the sign. The outline of the letters was designed with our company font type. Some of my thoughts was that it should be colorful, 3D and physical with things the user can interact with.

The basis for each letter are made by sheets of MDF. The wall where they should hang had plenty of empty space so I wanted to maximize the size of each letter. The only problem was that the letter A was a bit wider compared to the other letters, so A defined the total size for the rest. The four letters was each converted from a SVG file into a DXF file and laser cut on our CNC Laser cutter. We talked about painting the MDF plate but dropped the idea since we wanted to finish it as fast as possible.

My idea was to decorate the letters a bit like The Circuit Board Coffee Table were old printed circuit boards was used to cover the wooden plate. Compared to cover a large rectangular area it took a little more puzzle skills to do the same with narrow, triangle and round areas. The interesting thing is that all most all of the e-waste that is used has been used at my workplace in some form. Judge the result for yourself.

MODULES OF EACH LETTER

Have a closer look at the pictures below to study what each letter consist of.

E: fan, LCD from an oscilloscope, pump laser controller front panel, PCI server network card, CPU, power supplies, diskette, LEGO NXT controller, soldering kit.

L: VGA KVM switch, fan controller, LCD control panel, PLC interface card, router, Altera DE2 board.

A: red warning lamp, control board from an analog video camera, CAN development kit, Analog Discovery Sharc developer kit.

B: RAM module, oscilloscope control board, 8 bit computer control board, Anchor Chips development board, Atmel STK500 programmer kit, home made perf board, Devkit 8000 ARM Cortec A8 evaluation kit, multimeter, Analog Devices control board.

Feel free to use my idea to design you own project or reach out to me if you want me to design some e-waste art.

FUTURE DEVELOPMENT

A future development for the sign could be to make it more interactive so a LCD could write different messages, a blinking LED, a button that would turn on and off a fan or a speaker making a random sound when a person is detected by a motion sensor.

Indlægget Electronics Waste Sign blev først udgivet på Daths Garage.

INTRODUCTION

Before my wife and I had kids we used to have a small tv in our bedroom. That ended because our first daughter slept in our bedroom so we got rid of the tv because it interrupted her sleep. Now when our kids are getting older we wanted to get a tv again.
For some reason I had a hard time finding a tv that fulfilled my requirements.

• Small display size below 27″.
• Cheap, I don’t want to spend around 2.000 DKK for a new tv.
• I was willing to pay around 500 DKK for a used tv.
• Must be full HD resolution.
• Need to support DVB-C for our cable tv signal.
• I don’t want an ugly plastic tv (I used to have a Bang & Olufsen BeoVision 6).

Especially the last requirement was the hardest to fulfill. Many of the cheaper tv’s just look very bad and cheap. And if I found a used Sony or Samsung tv, that had a reasonable design, it would cost more than 1.000 DKK used. I kind of forgot about the tv until I found a Samsung tv that was left for bulk waste just around the corner of my building.

THE BROKEN TV

I picked up the tv and found the remote control lying next to it. At first sight the tv looked fine; the display wasn’t damaged and the cabinet looked fine. When I brought it home to my workshop I tried to power it on. The red standby LED turned on for a moment and then turned off again. The remote control didn’t changed anything. I started to inspect the tv and found out that the lower left corner had some broken plastic. To investigate if this damaged was related to the power on problem I unmounted the back part. With the electronics revealed I started to search for loose connectors, capacitors or other components which could have taken damage from the force that broke the corner. After a while I discovered that a corner near a screw mounting hole on the PSU PCB had some cracks. I unmounted the PCB and saw that the crack had disconnected two copper traces. I inspected the PCB and found out which components the copper traces was supposed to connect and made a repair by mounting insulated wires between the connections. I reconnected the PCB and tried to power on the tv. First sign of life was that the LED stayed on. Then I pushed the standby button on the remote control and the tv came to life. I didn’t had an antenna signal to test with but the menus worked and the HDMI input also showed a picture. So I assumed that the problem was solved.

HOMEMADE WOODEN FRAME

Now I had a working tv with a broken plastic frame that I didn’t want to try to repair. First I thought about just throwing away the complete frame and just use the display panel, but I needed something to hold the other parts like PSU, control board and speakers. Then I thought about building a plate on the back of the panel to mount the modules on. This could have worked for a workshop tv but this one had to be used in our bedroom so I needed to improve a little on the design.
In my junk pile I found some old bed slats that had the right dimensions for building a frame around the display panel. Since I didn’t like the color of the light pine wood I found some teak stain to give it a darker color. Then end result looked nice, but it was a mistake to glue the frame before applying the stain. Because the stain couldn’t bind on the corners because of the glue. The inner dimensions of the frame fits perfectly with the viewable area of the display. The dimensions for the frame was found in the datasheet of the panel. Two bed slats holds the panel in place and are spaced so the two PCBs can be mounted on them. Speakers are mounted on the button part of the frame. I haven’t found a perfect place for the IR receiver, I might drill a small hole in the frame so it can be mounted there.
I need to warn you that it is NOT a good idea to mount the PSU PCB directly on top of the wood because of fire risk because of the mains power. You need to mount an insulator in-between the two.

GALLERY

CONCLUSION

I really like the finished design of the tv – it’s very unique and matches the rest of our teak furniture. Many of our friends and family don’t really recognize that it’s a tv the first time they see it. I agree that it looks a lot like a small blackboard when it is turned off. The best thing about this project was that I got a tv and ended up paying nothing for it and had a fun time repairing and building it.

Indlægget How to Upcycle a Broken LCD TV blev først udgivet på Daths Garage.

I have had the idea about building my own workbench for a long time. My inspiration was something like this workbench which I think would match most of my needs. My prejudice, however, was that it would be expensive to buy the wood and take a lot of time to build it – especially because I don’t own a slide compound miter saw like this one that’s on my wish list.

The workbench I had until now was a cheap wooden table top with four metal legs, you can see it here. It was doing the job, but without any fancy features or storage facilities.
The reason for building the table now was just outside of my window the other day. On the other side of the street, where I live, someone had thrown out some wooden plates from what looked like a shelving system. I first saw them in the morning but thought it was an old Ikea furniture like a Kallax system. But when I saw it again later the same day I had to have a closer look at it. To my surprise the wooden plates or shelves were constructed out of glued wood so it was massive instead of garbage wood. I had to take the four shelves and the nine spacer parts with me and use it for a cool project. 

WORKBENCH

My first idea was to use them for a later project in a house to build shelves in a storage room. But I didn’t want them to fill up my precious space for a longer time and thought they were a bit massive for shelves. When I saw two of the shelves lying on the floor next to each other I recognized that they would make up a perfect work surface for a workbench. Another shelf could be mounted beneath the tabletop between the legs of the table for storage of a toolbox or power tools. The last shelf would be mounted on some of the spacer parts that came with it, as a top shelf for storage of measuring equipment. The underside of the top shelf would be an obvious location for some LED lighting. 

For a long time I wanted to buy something like a Blika workshop table or an electronics table from HIN.
Unfortunately both of them cost way more than I can afford and none of them completely fulfill my needs for a workbench. So I’m very happy with this design since I think it solve most of my needs. 

DESIGN

As usual before most of my projects I start by drawing everything in a 3D model. I started by drawing the shelf plates and the spacer rectangles. That made it much easier to play around with different designs and find the right dimensions for the wood I needed to buy. 

The chassis of the workbench had to be built from new materials. So I took inspiration from this DIY workbench.

It is built from 2×4 lumber which translates into 47×100 mm or 45×95 when planned. In my first drawing I used the 47×100 mm by mistake, so I had to update it when I had bought the lumber and measured it to be around 45×95 mm. From my model I could also estimate the size and amount of screws that I needed. 

ASSEMBLY

Parts list

• 5x 47×100 mm lumber 2.4 m length
• Box of wood screws 80 mm long
• 24x M6 40mm countersunk for upper part and top shelf
• 4x plates measuring 38×185 cm 
• 8 pieces of rectangle spacer parts measuring 33.5×37 cm with threaded inserts in the top 

Because I got the last two items on the list for free I ended up paying just around 200 DKR for the wood and the screws.

The five pieces of wood was cut into the following sizes
Pieces 1-3 is cut to 142 cm and 88 cm 
Piece 4 is cut to 2×54 cm and 2×62.8 cm
Piece 5 is cut to 2×62.8 cm and 88 cm 

1. First the two end pieces are assembled by using 2×88 cm for legs and 2×62.8 cm for sides. Two screws are used to fix every joint together.
2. The two end modules are connected by the 2×142 cm cross sections. In the upper corner joints four screws are used.
3. To reinforce the support of the table top two pieces of 54 cm are mounted between the long pieces.
4. To reinforce the bottom shelf and stabilize the table, another piece of 142 cm is mounted between the end modules.
5. The bottom shelf is mounted on top and fixed by wood screws.
6. On top of the table chassis two shelf plates are mounted. I cut away some of the material to make the shelves fit into the chassis. To make the table top more stable the two shelves are fixed together by screws
7. On top of the inner shelf the spacer parts are mounted by using M6 screws and nuts. For each side four spacer parts are joined together by M6 screws vertical and wood screws horizontal. 
8. The top shelf is mounted with four M6 screws on each side.

The assembled workbench is 185 cm wide, 76 cm depth and 166 cm high. The table top measures 90 cm from the ground witch is about the right height for me when I stand up.

LIGHTING

With the new workbench finished I realized that the top shelf is just below the old fluorescent lamps in the workshop. So I needed to find another source of lighting for the workbench. I knew I wanted the lighting to be LED based and started to look at LED strips on eBay. However one of my requirements was that the light needed to be diffuse and even so I can use the workbench as a simple “light box” for taking pictures of computers and projects without too much glare or shadows. Instead of mounting multiple LED strips and a diffuser on top I started looking for a solution that already included some kind of diffusing material. I realized that LED lamp panels aren’t that expensive, but most of them measure 60×60 cm. After a little search around I also found panels in a 120×30 cm size. This would make a perfect fit beneath the top shelf where the available space measures 134×34 cm. I found an almost new LED panel with a matching driver at DBA. When I received it I was surprised to find out that the driver also included a dimming feature. A push switch has to be connected as an on/off switch as well as a dimming function when the switch is pressed a little longer. I wasn’t sure if I could drill through the outer aluminum frame of the LED panel so instead I found some extruded aluminum profile I had lying around. The profiles are mounted directly into the top shelf and works great as mounting for the LED panel. The push switch is also mounted directly into the aluminum mounting with the cables hidden inside of it. The LED driver is mounted beneath the shelf and powered directly from 230V mains supply.

The finished light solution works very well. It gives a bright and even light on the table top. The dimming feature is nice but I’m not sure how much it is gonna be used. I will still keep my old architect lamp that I had on the old workbench. It will be mounted on the side to give some extra lighting from the sides. Maybe I will add an extra for the other side. 

EXTRA FEATURES

After the workbench has been assembled there are still a few things that have been done and still need to be done. I will continuously add images of the different details when they have been installed. 

TABLE TOP PROTECTION

I had a small piece of thin aluminum sheet that has been applied to protect the table when soldering or using chemicals or similar. It has been bent to fit over the front edge so it slides smoothly from site to site and can easily be removed when not in use.

CABLE HOLDER

I want to take advantage of the free space around the rectangular spacers for the top shelf. By mounting a threaded rod through one of the spacers and fixing it by a nut in each end, it can be used as a cable reel rack for small 0.25mm2 mounting wires in different colors. 
On the end of the top shelf I want to mount a cable holder for mains power cables, USB, ethernet, HDMI etc. Hopefully it will help me from having a bag of tangled cable

FANS

Below the cable reel rack I want to mount some 120 mm fans both for cooling during the summer but mostly for removing solder fume from my face when working with precision soldering.

PCB BACKGROUND

Instead of the usual tool board on the wall behind the workbench I want to mount my PCB background plate that was actually made for building an extra circuit board coffee table. The PCB plate is a great background when taking pictures of projects or computers for the collection. 
Now I just have to figure out where I want to store all my hand tools. 

POWER STRIP

Another very important item that is still missing on my workbench is a power strip with plenty of outlets or maybe one on each side. One can never have too many mains outlets for e.g. light, soldering iron, oscilloscope, power supply, computer.

TOP SHELF

My idea with the top shelf is to use it for my oscilloscope and laboratory power supplies, together with decorative vintage electronics items, like an old PLC system like an Allen Bradley SLC 500 that I once got a lot of.

GALLERY

CONCLUSION

I’m very happy that I ended up grapping the parts that was about to end as bulk waste. Nothing was wrong with the wood, but someone just didn’t wanted it any longer. I ended up getting a great workbench for a very low price, the total build was finished within a couple of days and I managed to upcycle some old parts so they didn’t had to be thrown away.
The workbench is very sturdy and includes many of the features that I imagined including lot of storage room. The top part can be removed by unscrewing eight screws if I need a larger working surface for a project. The LED lighting is a nice solution, very discrete, but with plenty of light that can be supplemented by the architect lamp. I’m looking forward to use the table as a light box for taking pictures of my computers.

Indlægget Homemade Workbench from Salvaged Parts blev først udgivet på Daths Garage.

Background

I have always been fascinated about cool secret hiding places, hidden in normal everyday objects around the home. Not because I have something to hide from anyone, but more in a cool childish spy gadget way. This is a short DIY project about how to make your own secret organizer hidden in a normal drawer.
I was inspired from this Makezine page that sums up some of the coolest hidden rooms from the simplest hidden compartment from cutout pages inside a book to complete hidden rooms and even a garage. In my opinion some of the coolest is the fake mains power outlet that reveals a tiny storage room for valuables and the idea about drilling a hole in the top face of a door that is large enough for a cigar cylinder that can hide money or a USB memory stick.

This project was inspired by the False Bottom Secret Compartment because it was a perfect addition for another project I’m working on. Even though I think the idea about using a false bottom plate is great, I didn’t like the way it was constructed. All the hidden things will rattle around when the drawer is opened or closed. I wanted to design a more professional solution with an organizer where things have a specific place and where they fit without moving around and reveal their hiding place. Below you will find a description of how I designed it.

How it’s made

1. Measure the inner dimensions of the drawer. Be precise because it’s important to make a tight fit with the organizer plate and the new bottom plate.
2. Find out what you want to hide in the drawer. Take precise measure of all the items. I always prefer to make a digital sketch. My preferred programs are Trimble Sketchup for quick ideas and Fusion 360 when I want to 3D print or laser cut something. When all the items has been sketched it is easier to figure out how to do the complete layout. Make sure to leave enough empty space around the outer border for strength of the plate. Remember to think about the height of the object. I settled on a 5 mm thick acrylic plate for the organizer plate but you could use plywood or similar instead.
3. Laser cut the organizer plate and the extra bottom plate. Make sure the wooden veins are in the same direction as the real bottom and has the same color and texture. It’s also important to make sure that the plates fits into the drawer, and the cutouts for the items are perfect. The width of the laser cut path on the laser cutter I use is around 0.2 mm which is a perfect tolerance so the things don’t get stuck in the organizer plate.
4. Make a small circle in the front of the organizer plate. This is used to push up the false bottom plate.
5. Put the organizer plate in the drawer and drill through the hole and through the real drawer bottom.
6. Fill up the organizer with the items you designed it for and put the false bottom plate on top.
7. To get access to your items, use a pen and push it up from the underside of the drawer to lift up the false bottom plate again.

If you don’t have access to a laser cutter another solution could be to use cardboard for the organizer. Then maker small paper models in actual size of the things that needs to go into the organizer and use a sharp knife to make the cutout holes.

Organizer design

Below is the final design of my organizer. It’s always hard for me to settle on a final design, because things can always be optimized. Going from left to right the large room is for a folded A4 document (or A5). The middle top and bottom rooms are for banknotes, the dimensions fits a Danish 1,000 KR banknote and smaller. In-between there are two credit card sized rooms room for ID or credit cards. To the right there are room for two USB memory sticks. At the far right (the front of the drawer) there is easy access to the four SD card rooms and two Compact Flash card rooms. The hole for lifting up the false bottom plate is placed in the front middle.

Final assembly

The organizer looks way more cool with all the stuff in it. Everything fits perfectly except for the Microdrives (type of CF card) that needs a little adjustment to fit. Another small annoyance is that the plate I used for the false bottom was cut in the wrong directions compared to the veins of the original bottom plate. The pictures also shows that the false bottom has a tiny gab but that is important in order to make it possible to lift it up.
I’m very happy about this quick little hack. And I can always make another or one more organizer if I need room for other secret things. What do you want to store in your own secret organizer?

Indlægget How to Make a Secret Organizer in a Drawer blev først udgivet på Daths Garage.

Introduction

Over the years I have come across different giant projects. There is a Giant Arduino Uno, a Giant LED, a Giant Resistor ohmmeter, a Giant NE555 footstool and lately a Giant SD card. I’m not sure why people think is so interesting to upscale tiny objects from around there lab, I guess there are different stories and reasons. But now there is also the Giant Vacuum Tube Lamp and here is my story about it.

Inspiration

The other evening I was trying to get an overview of all our digital images that were spread all over the digital place. From old smartphones including online backup services that were about to expire or filled up, like Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive to different folders in different computers and backup hard drives to an old camera in a drawer. On an old hard drive I found some very interesting images taken longtime ago at a music festival with the famous, now dead, Danish musician Kim Larsen that I have heard on the radio since my childhood. In the background of the stage stood four vacuum tube models the same height as a person. They looked rather realistic with orange light simulating the filament heater and blue light simulating the fluorescence that can be seen in some power tubes. My guess is that they should look like EL34 power tubes typically found in guitar tube amplifiers. I remember that I thought they looked so cool and wanted to build something similar. But I never got anything done about it – until now.

When I saw the images again I got the same excitement and started to search around for the part that would define the rest of the design – the glass envelope. I was surprised to find many different products available. Typically used as a glass bell for displaying flowers or other creative things as an interior decoration. Most of them had a dome shape at the end without a tip resembling the exhaust tip on a vacuum tube. This was not a big problem because it looked a lot like the EL34 where the exhaust tip is hidden at the bottom of the tube between the pins. The dimensions of the glass bell gave me some dimensions to continue my work with the search for the rest of the parts. An EL34 measures 33.3 mm in diameter and is 98 mm high including the socket but without the pins. The closest I could come to this relationship, using the largest glass bell I could find, was one that had a diameter of 21.5 cm and a height of 52.5 cm. This gives an upscaling factor around 7 for both diameter and height.

Design and construction

After settling on the outer dimensions I started to search for inspiration for the internal structure of the vacuum tube. I wanted it to look a bit more realistic than the ones I saw at the stage and another project I found online.

The outer structure of the tube is inspired by an EL34 tube mainly because the glass bell has a rounded top like an EL34 without an exhaust tip at the top. The connection pins on an EL34 is connected to a brown or black socket part that would be a perfect way to connect the glass bell with the connection pins on my model. 

The internal structure is inspired by the front cover of a book from my collection called Build Your Own Audio Valve Amplifiers. I didn’t want it to look like the internal of an EL34 because there isn’t much to see other than a big solid metal plate. I found an EF89 in my parts bin that has a nicer metal grid around the heater and grid wires that can be seen beneath. The EF89 is commonly used as a R.F. Pentode in AM/FM radios. 

Starting from the inside and out the heater is built from two 230V LED filament light bulbs mounted top to top. Around the bulbs an enameled copper wire is wrapped imitating a grid. Around this grid another grid is wrapped around two threaded rods. The last layer is a thin perforated metal plate imitating the outer metal plate. The six threaded rods are held together in each end by the insulating spacers made from laser cut acrylic plates that are sanded to give them a matt finish like mica. At the top end two of the threaded rods are extended to work as mounting for the getter ring. At the bottom the internal structure of the vacuum tube is connected to the socket by thin copper tubes going from the threaded rods down to the pins in the socket. To straighten the copper tube before bending to the right angles I used my Tube Straightening Tool.
The socket is made by laser cut plates of plywood glued together to give the right height. The plates were made with holes for the eight pins which are glued on. The curved surface of the socket has been sanded down and plastered before a spray primer has been applied. The last step was to paint it with a black glossy spray paint to make the surface look piano black.
The two light bulbs are connected in parallel and the power cables to them are routed through two of the copper pipes and down through two individual pins and connected to a transparent copper wire. 

Final details

There are still room for minor upgrades:

• Make larger cutouts in the pins where the power cables go through them.
• The getter ring should be sanded and painted silver to look like metal.
• The top part of the glass bell should be painted dark silver to look like vaporized barium.
• As a lamp the amount of light from the two light bulbs is perfect, but as a model of a vacuum tube it would be nice to add a light dimmer to make the filament look a bit more realistic.

Parts list

1x Glass bell – glass envelope
9x 12mm round plywood plates – socket
8x metal tubes – pins
6x M6 metal threaded rods with nuts – internal structure
2x acrylic plates – insulating plates
1x acrylic circle – getter ring
2x LED filament light bulbs – filament
8x copper tubes – connection between pins and internal structure
1x Enameled copper wire – grid
1x Thin perforated metal plate – outer plate
1x 230V transparent copper wire 
8x Acrylic plate for connecting pins and copper tube
4x Acrylic plate for light bulbs
1x Acrylic socket top plate

Specification

Final thoughts

I think my giant vacuum tube lamp turned out almost as I had hoped for when I imagined it in my head. I spend the most time on completing the socket because I wasn’t happy with the result after the first time I painted it. The surface wasn’t smooth enough, so I had to sand down the paint and primer to make the surface more even before repaint. This had been a much easier task if I had had the right tools like a belt or disk sander to sand the wood in the first place. Much of the design has also been work in progress while building it since I did not made a complete 3D drawing of the vacuum tube prior to the build. That made it necessary to adjust and modify some parts throughout the build.
I think the final result looks much like a real vacuum tube (except for the bright heater) and I’m especially happy with how the connections from the pins to the internal structure has been made with thin copper tubes that looks realistic.

If you have any feedback please comment below or contact me. If you are interested in buying your own giant vacuum tube lamp please contact me and convince me to make another one for you.

Indlægget Giant Vacuum Tube Lamp blev først udgivet på Daths Garage.

It all started with an old factory that was about to be cleared of inventory before demolition. I was allowed to get a lot of old SAIA PCA1 PLC systems for free I just had to remove them myself. Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures from the PLC room. But imaging a room the size of a small office packed with PLC racks along all the walls of the room. Unfortunately the room had been vandalized so the cabinet doors had been broken open and some of the equipment had been smashed.

However I managed to salvage around 20 complete PLC systems from the room together with several hundreds of SPDT relays mounted in the racks and connected to the outputs of the PLCs. The relays are still lying around somewhere in a box waiting for me to build something cool out of them like playing with Digital Relay logic, build a Digital Relay Clock, or something like a Single Board Relay Computer. However my main reason for keeping them is to build a relay version of the discrete logic in the SN74LS181 4-bit ALU.

In each PLC unit there was a motherboard consisting of an Intel 8085 8-bit microprocessor together with 62256 RAM, 8255 PPI, 8251 UART and 8253 Timer chips and the corresponding control logic. On two modules on top of the motherboard up to eight I/O boards were connected. As I understand it, these boards were ADC input board, multiplexer boards for BCD switches, output TRIAC boards, mixed input output boards, communication modules to passive extension housing modules without the CPU but with room for eight extra I/O boards. 

For a long time I didn’t know what to use all that equipment for, clearly it didn’t work. Most of the motherboards had clear signs of leaking backup batteries and some was missing the program EEPROMs. I kept them because I wanted to build a nice visual decoration out of it.

One night I was searching around on Google image search about circuit board decoration and came across Chris Harrison’s Circuit Table. Immediately I knew what to do with my pile of old circuit boards and computer motherboards, I wanted to build something like Chris’s table. Instead of the IKEA Lack table that he used as a basis I wanted to go with a bit more industrial look. I started to make a drawing in Sketchup with one of my favorite building materials 20×20 extruded aluminum profiles.

The final design ended up much like I had imagined with a nice industrial look. The PCBs should be mounted under the top glass plate on a wooden plate. The lower horizontal part of the chassis stabilizes the legs and makes it possible to install a second wooden plate as a shelve by adding some extra support beams.

Parts needed for the table:

• glass plate 10mm, 135×75 cm
• wooden plywood plate(s) 12mm, 120×60 cm
• 8x 200cm 20×20 extruded aluminum profiles
• Screws and assembly corners for the beams

After a quick search for the parts needed for the table and prices, I realized that it would cost way more than what I was willing to spend on it. Especially because there isn’t room for the coffee table in my workshop at the moment. Instead of buying the glass plate new from a glazier I thought about reusing it from a second hand coffee table found online. Luckily I found a table with a glass plate of the correct dimensions on DBA in a nearby city. When I got the table home I realized that it would actually be possible to reuse the entire table with glass plate and metal chassis with minor changes.

On top of the grey metal legs the plywood plate is installed and then the round tubes holding the table is just mounted on top of the wooden plate. Everything is kept in place my a threaded rod inside the round tubes. The plywood plate was prepared by cutting it to the right size, drilling holes in each corner for the threaded rod, sand it down and painting.

After this the fun part begun; playing PCB Tetris, by installing them on the wooden plate and make them fit with the least overhang and avoid empty holes in between. The available Tetris pieces was the PCBs from the PLC (the reason why I got the idea to this project), some old PC motherboards with RAM and CPU and graphic cards I had harvested from computers found lying around for bulky waste and old development boards. After playing around with different layouts I found a solution were everything fit optimal.
Instead of just being a static decoration without anything happening, I wanted the table to have some dynamic features that could be implemented sometime in the future like a spinning fan, clicking relays or blinking LEDs. That is the reason for installing the LED diagnostics panel from an old IBM server acting as a Blinkenlights. There were also room for a small LED dot matrix scrolling display. Everything should be controlled from a small ESP8266 controlled through WiFi.
At the moment only the LED matrix display is controlled through the ESP8266. The device connects to my local network through WiFi, and then the display starts to show it’s IP address. When going to this page a small web server is loaded where a message can be entered to display on the display.

A video showing the scrolling message, the table is shown without the glass plate mounted.

I’m very happy about the final design of the table, especially because I found a perfect donor table that saved me a lot of money since I didn’t had to buy the extruded aluminum profiles and the glass plate. This also greatly reduced the time I took for me to build the table.
After assembling this table I still had plenty old printed circuit boards left so I assembled another wooden plate with some of them. The purpose of this could be to make another table. If anyone is interested in buying one contact me? For now I will use the plate as a background frame when taking pictures of the different items for my retro computer collection

Indlægget The Circuit Board Coffee Table blev først udgivet på Daths Garage.