@jbv is correct that the side by side drawers won’t fit a 12x20 sheet of PG. The top drawer does. But since I use a lot of non-12x20 material it’s not an issue for me. I have tools and supplies in them. I also have the left side for wood (plywood mostly) segregated by thickness by drawer. The right side is for acrylic similarly sorted. The deep drawers are used for big stacks (I often buy 4 dozen pieces of 12x12 stock) and other materials like rocks and glass ornaments and wooden kitchen utensils to be lasered, etc.
Even if I could put all my PG in this, I’d still need another shelving unit of some sort for the other stuff. The things you can laser will consume the space you have to store it until it overflows. It’s the universal law of lasers.
I did get mine for $100 off I also replaced the two non-swivel casters with swiveling ones to make it easier to roll & spin around as I’ve got a Pro coming and want to be able to pivot it for long stuff.
@chris1 which Ikea table tops are those? I know it’s based on the Ikea hack from Jonathan Fong, but you used a different top and maybe different TT for the shelves. Are you stll happy with this design? Anything else you would do differently?
I might have put slightly longer legs on the bottom so I can shove some larger boxes under there. But then again, the height is pretty much where I want it. The other thing I’ve thought about is putting casters on the bottom. I didn’t glue everything in place, so it wouldn’t be too hard to disassemble.
did you need to get any attachments for the vent? I was just going to cut a piece of plywood with a hole and duct tape around to seal it as best I can but it’s looking like that is too simple.
The most useful answers can be found in the many lengthy discussions of ventilation we have had elsewhere on this forum. You can use the search function to explore them.
A word of caution on those Capita legs. They are OK structurally (just barely) when being compressed, but if you put any tension on them, they will fall apart just like this:
There is some benefit to affixing them in some way, though. Without that it would be really easy to knock a shelf off.
BTW, how did you call with the thin material in that top shelf in your design? I went with the same Ikea tabletop and found the material was REALLY thin everywhere except the edges. I am a bit worried that the top bracket will come loose.
I don’t remember, TBH. I remember worrying about where to put the screws, but then I either found some meat or I just stopped worrying and learned to love the weight of the Glowforge keeping everything rigid.
That’s exactly what I was thinking! I really like that flat file storage Ikea hack shown here, but I don’t know how I feel about the glue securing the short Capita legs.
My favorite perk of the ALEXes is that they aren’t quite table height (My gf lives at counter height), so I use the top surface to store things that are too big.
Someone’s going to ask, so: It’s 26" tall according to their site, but 26.25 according to my tape measure.
This is what I have –
I wonder if I also need this? It would be awesome for scraps, which are a storage hassle for me–
OK so EDIT: that second unit, the skinny one… I wanted to know drawer interior dimensions, so I checked amazon. What I found, basically, is that they are 11.5 by 20.5". Just barely too small for a full PG sheet, but awesome for a lot of Inventables stuff and scraps.
Actual answer from Amazon:
Question: Inside drawer measurement?
Answer: Long: 1 Ft. 8 1/2 inch ,
Deep: (high) 3 1/2 inch (small drawer) 4 1/2 inch (Big drawer)
Width: 11 1/2 inch
Yup. my alex rolling drawer unit lives under the alex-based desktop, and there’s an inch or so to put the pieces that I don’t want to put in the drawers. And the narrow one holds offcuts and tools and everything else…
I went through a material hoarding phase, so I am actually out of drawers and have hardwoods all over the place. It’s fine, as they wouldn’t have fit anyway, they are 6" by 24" generally (green valley scores). but I have a paper/cork drawer, a proofgrade-everything drawer, a baltic drawer, a “weird stuff” drawer, which has like leather and rubber and whatnot, an acrylic/inventables drawer… and so on.
If I could have found a fullsize blueprint flat file I might have gone with that (usually rolls in at like 300 used, which is a lot, but they are ne plus ultra), but craigslist was coming up empty when I was looking, and I already had another ALEX for my Cricut, so I just went with it.
I also replaced the two non-swivel casters with swiveling ones to make it easier to roll & spin around as I’ve got a Pro coming and want to be able to pivot it for long stuff.
