Actually, I was going to get into watchmaking and learning how to fix mechanical watches, but living in a tiny London flat I somehow ended up spending the last few months building a hideaway desk for my new hobby where I can leave all the mess on the desk and hide it all away at a press of a button at dinner time.
In hindsight there are so many things that I would have done differently, but for now it fulfils its purpose. I used four linear actuators with ball screws and stepper motors, controlled by an Arduino to do the lifting. To lock it in place, I used four electronic door latches. The movable frame is made of 20mm aluminium profiles, the back with the tool holders is from IKEA, and the MDF furniture boards were ordered cut to size from an online supplier.
Nice! Have you made a start on any watches yet? I have lost a pocket watch screw in my carpet under my desk for a week before, starting with a tidy workspace is a much better way of doing things than my disorganised desk!
I’d be interested to hear more about the programming side of things. Do the linear actuators have limit switches to cut them off at the top, or was that programmed via the Arduino? Looks great, and very neat work!
Yes, I’ve got one pair of optical limit switches and I programmed the Arduino to stop when they’re reached and engage the electromagnetic latches.
Lots of problems with that though… if the surface accidentally gets tilted a bit, it won’t correct for that and the linear actuators without end switches are just gonna crash into the end
Also I had to spend quite a while to figure out how to accelerate / decelerate the steppers since the standard libraries didn’t run fast enough on my arduino to reach full speed.
If I were to do it again, I’d probably try it with linear actuators with built in end switches, like the ones used to open and close windows.
That’s a really neat bit of furniture. Clever use of limited space and I bet it’s grin-inducing every time you make it go
I’d probably have gone for something hand-powered for simplicity. A 1/4" socket on the front with a crank handle in the drawer (just stick a power drill on if you’re in a hurry lol). Less to go wrong…
