Made a rolling Glowforge table/shelf-unit

In anticipation of receiving my glowforge this summer, I wanted a rolling “cart”? so I could tuck it away in a corner when not in use, but bring it over to the door to the back yard when cutting.

Didn’t have a table saw here in Brooklyn, so I decided to use 1/2" birch plywood and 1x6 poplar straight off the Home Depot shelf in a simple 3-layer sandwich, with thinner poplar dividers between shelves.

It’s just a tad bigger than the glowforge in width and depth, at 39" x 21", is 16" tall (so with the Glowforge and vacuum unit will come up to table height, and has 6 shelves that hold exactly the 12x20 stock that fits on the bed of the glowforge.

Nothing fancy, but a fun afternoon project!

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Great job! Love all the built in storage! :relaxed:

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Wow. If I could have bought something like this reasonably I would have done it. It’s perfect!

What I ended up doing is buying a TV rolling table/stand:

It’s setting here quietly awaiting a Glowforge.

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This looks like a great cart. :grinning: I really like the way that you setup the shelves to fit your supplies. Great Idea! I just have a desk at this point but I have been thinking of making something else for my Glowforge for when it arrives.

Thanks for sharing @weasel!

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I’m starting to realize that my table is a bit tall for holding a Forge.

Might have to take a chop saw to the legs.

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Looks good. I like the slots in the front to store a bunch of material.

Make sure you can lock the casters somehow, or else the table may sway when the cutting head is moving. Which may affect the cut.

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Great job! The GF is of a size that almost requires a custom table like you built. Perfect. BTW, I love that old phone in the picture. My family had one just like it in 1963…a party line too with the neighbors. :grinning: - Rich

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When I was a kid, there was a time we were on a party line. First thing mom would do when we got a call was to tell “Mrs. Jones” that she could hang up now, other wise she would listen to the whole call :smile:

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Funny what people notice in the pictures, my focus (after the awesome cart) was the GIGANTIC gumball machine in the background with bouncy balls(?) in it. THAT looks like something that would attract the kids at family parties!

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Nice work!
If the casters don’t lock, you can easily ‘chock’ them with a few scrap blocks, or even turn the casters on each end perpendicular to one another.
Don’t think the mass of the laser head will have much influence against the mass of the cart with the laser sitting on it, but I could be mistaken.

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nice job! looks great!

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And I was thinking "that turtle seems to like it …!"
Beautiful job btw.! One possible addition is to put drawer slides in one of the openings with a drawer, shallow drawer, or tray slide-out. Once you start using the GF you will find yourself with a lot of pieces smaller than 20x12 starting to pile up. :slight_smile:

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Or in all the top (or bottom) bays. Then you can segregate by material - e.g. Birch Ply, Acrylic, etc. and then by full sheets & drawer of cutoffs. I’d look at making it taller with more bays though so I could have 2 common thicknesses of stuff - 1/4 & 1/8".

Alternately make it 25" deep by 36 or whatever wide for the bays/drawers. Then use drawers instead of open bays. Split the drawer into 2 12x20 sections and another one (or 2) 16x25 or 16x12 sections for the cutoffs. Then you can have drawers by material that hold 2 different thicknesses and cutoffs from those thicknesses. 8" tall drawers would hold plenty of raw stock.

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This is great! I love all the shelves.

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Figure out how to store twenty different pieces if material that all have bits and pieces cut out of them.

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From Michaels:

It’s 12"x12" and it’s called Iris Scrapbook Case. $4. Of course you can’t put the larger pieces in but it should hold all the cut bits nicely.

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The issue I am having is I don’t want to go through a stack of materials to find the one I need. I know everyone keeps saying that if you store materials on edge they can warp. That’s not always a concern. Verticals slots or a bunch of horizontal shelves 2" high would be helpful.

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my glowforge scrap box will most certainly be made on the glowforge and cut from scrap.

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How about this organizer cube, also available at Michaels? You can place it vertically or horizontally:

Shelves are 3.5" apart. Costs a lot more, though.

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Sounds like you want a standard magazine-art-department flatfile cabinet. But those are expensive.

Maybe a few of these screwed together

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