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Weekly Hardware
Week 13:
Final Assembly
The Rising Desk is Complete!!
Structural Connections
This week, I made the structural connections between all the members that made up the desk. Wood screws were used at all the joints. The size, number and position of each screw was calculated in Week 9. This week, I simply relied on those calculations to realise the connections.
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Pilot holes were drilled on one member while clearance holes on the corresponding connecting member. I'm glad I took the time to test the right size of the pilot hole needed. While experimenting with different sized, I manged to shear off one of the screws while trying to drive it with an impact driver.
The horizontal drilling machine was used to make the pilot holes on the vertical rail and the legs.
The horizontal drilling machine was used to make the pilot holes on the vertical rail.
The clearance holes on the base member for the screws that attach to the vertical rail, were drilled on the milling machine. This was to accurately align the holes and avoid having to enlarge holes manually if they didn't align.
With all the holes drilled and some countersunk, the members were ready to be joined together.
With the structure assembled, I moved on to connecting the steel tube ( cantilever support for table top) to the table top and to the slider. Once again, following my calculations from week 9, I drilled the appropriate holes. I then MIG welded the steel tube to a steel plate that would be screwed onto the slider.
Finally, I checked that the motion of the slider in the rail was still smooth. Due to the recent rains, the humidity change caused the wood to swell up in certain parts. I was forced to sand the inner surface of the rail where ever the slider would get stuck. In the end, I had a slider that could freely slide in the rail. However, the final clearance I ended up with was a lot more than I designed for. ( about 1.5mm compared to desired 0.5mm).
After attaching my table top and wiring in all the electronics, my sliding desk was complete! I was also happy with the level of my table top! Next week, I plan on closing the design loop by testing performance of my desk and comparing it with predicted values.
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