(ABANDONED) Making a shelf with an LED channel and a USB charger, oh and also a coffee table

#1

So I have a plan for a 2m long 15cm deep shelf I want to make with a recess for an LED strip, and a little pocket for a USB charger, made from white melamine faced birch ply. This stuff:

and

I’ve asked a few CNC places for quotes, and it’s a bit excessively expensive and they have a minimum order of 5 sheets. I’m not going to one entire sheet with this project, so there’s potentially a fair bit of waste. If I forgo the complicated pocket thingy, it’d probably be feasible to make with a table saw or router to cut the recess, but still I have most of a sheet left over.

Two possibilities I think are realistic:

  1. Would anyone be up for doing some kind of a group CNC order (not dissimilar to a PCB pooling service like OSHpark). Happy to do the pannelization myself. Obviously it’d all have to be out of the same material and I’d need to take money upfront.
  2. Alternatively, if I were to get a 2400x1200 sheet of 18mm melamine faced birch ply, would anyone like to buy the remainder of the sheet from me (which will be most of the sheet) (and also I’d need to ask a favour of someone who can use the table saw :slight_smile: )

Plus one not-really possibility, is that I make loads of the things and try and sell them to recoup the costs! Not sure there’s much of a market for such things…

#2

You can cut some pretty complex things with a hand held router, guide bush and laser cut template.

2 Likes
#3

We can easily do this with our tools.

Talk to me next time you see me

#4

I’ll take you up on that @joeatkin2 :slight_smile:

Although there is still the problem of having a sheet of material I don’t know what to do with once I’m done with my (small) project.

#5

Perhaps time to trial the “stocking a sheet of birch ply” idea.

#6

You could donat it to electronics so I can finish there storage

#7

Could do - although that would make it a very expensive shelf :slight_smile:

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#8

True but you would be able to find a 46pF cap

#9

Now I’ve had a chance to look at your thread - that is super cool !

#10

One thing I could do just get a sheet cut to size, which might be a bit less horrendous than CNC costs. But if anyone else wanted some boards it might be easier to split the costs that way. I don’t really want to have to pay £139 for a shelf (even if most of that is a donation to the electronics bench…sorry!).

I’m thinking 18mm white melamine faced ply:

https://www.slhardwoods.co.uk/products/sheet-material/melamine-birch-plywood/white-melamine-faced-birch-plywood-2440-x-1220mm

They’re doing a discount on that at the moment :slight_smile:

Alternatively, I’ll have to dream up a few more things I can use it for that are within my current skills to make it more worth it…

Double alternatively, I can suck it up and get some melamine faced MDF and put on some edge banding instead for a heck of a lot less.

#11

MDF is hopeless for shelves

Regular ply and paint it ?

Why do you want a plastic finish?

#12

So it’ll match the rest of my furniture, and also for ease of cleaning :slight_smile: I’ve got a desk I made which is painted ply, and it’s a real pain to clean. Also for the durability of the surface.

There are many reasons I wanted to go for ply, one being the load bearing abilities and another being the less liklihood of warping. Also, I don’t mind the look of the edge of plywood, so I wouldn’t have to do any edging :smiley:

I’m starting to come around to making use of the rest of the sheet elsewhere, I could do with a new coffee table and I think if I got the sheets cut to reasonable sized boards I could manage to make such a thing - I’d need some help getting the longer mitred cuts done with the table saw - but I think the rest I can probably learn. And hopefully not screw up too much :stuck_out_tongue: