Drawers for Rack-It Shelving

The Rack-It shelving that you can get at hardware stores is great, but I have one problem with it, it doesn't come with any decent drawer options.  So I built my own.  I have previously described the construction of the Custom Wooden Drawers.

The design is pretty simple.  Two panels with drawer runners are pressed against the posts on either side by spreader bars, these panels are attached to the shelf underneath, and this is all connected to the main frame so that when you open the drawers they don't overbalance.

It's designed to be disassembled so it can be transported easily by one person.  I think I have it sorted, I'd do certain parts differently if I did it again, but this does the job and was fun to make.

I still have to put the handles on the front and dress it up a bit, but that's a job that can be done later on,
but for now I have about 11 cubic feet of drawer space to play with.

The assembled drawers

The frame with the drawers removed

Left side supporting panel with drawer runners and spreader bars fitted

The routed channel the spreader bars fit into

M3 threaded rod with lock nuts on either end hold the spreader bars in place

The middle drawer clearing the spreader bars

Steel angle bolted to the underside of the shelf locks the frame in place

Resizing EPS Files

This shouldn't be so hard.  All I wanted to do was take an EPS file, print it to a PDF file, while scaling it to fit the page.  Simple right?  Well I had no luck.  Below is a short clip of what I finally came up with to do the job.  It worked like a treat in this case.

Microwave Door Notebook Cooler Stand

I hate to see things go to waste, so I try to reuse things whenever I can.  One of my most used finds is a stand for my notebook that I scrounged from an old microwave.  As it turns out the metal shielding grill from inside the door is perfect for this.  It's metal and conducts heat well, it's full of holes to allow airflow, and it's raised, which stops on of my pet hates, laptops in dusty environments.  I've lost too many good appliances to dust so I'm a bit pedantic about it now.  The cooling fans of notebooks love to suck in dust from carpets, couches and clothes, so if you can put an air gap between the computer and fabric you slow the air flow down and it no longer acts like a vacuum cleaner.

Anyway, recently my sisters microwave bit the dust and was too expensive to fix, which means I get to tear apart another unsuspecting household appliance, and this time I thought I'd document it.

This will be pretty simple.  I'm not going to open up the microwave, just pry the door open.  There can be high voltages on the capacitors in the microwave for a long time even after being unplugged, and there can be hazardous chemicals in the magnetron inside, so if you are going to pull it apart, be careful.

The patient ready for surgery

After I pried the plastic frame from the door with a flat bladed screwdriver

As bonus you get a clear piece of plastic in the door

The metal frame with an adhesive plastic sheet

Removing the plastic sheet

The leftovers.  These will be disposed of in e-waste

Another piece I wish I had a use for

After a clean up we have the final product

The product in use, there's even a place to put your pen on the left

Custom Wooden Drawers

Now for something completely unrelated to anything electronic.  Lately I have been building some drawers to fit into a storage unit I bought from Bunnings.  Usually I would go out and buy this kind of thing, but I couldn't find anything the right size, so I had to custom build it.

Basically I wanted something cheap and big.  After looking around Bunnings I found some cheap pine in various widths that is 19mm thick.  It'll do the job but it's full of knots and you'd be hard pressed to find a straight piece of wood, but we can deal with this.

The design I'm going to use is pretty simple, front, back, two sides, and a base.  The sides slot into dados in the front and back and the base fits into a routed channel at the bottom.  Then it's all glued and screwed together.  Below are a few pictures of a drawer.

All the pieces ready for assembly

Dado for the side and routed groove for the base

Close up of the corner

Routed stopped dado in the front panel

A knot in the wood glued and filled to stabilise it

The side fitted to the front

The drawer assembled with a notch chiselled out for the drawer slides

Drawer slide attached

Drawer slide extended, clearing the cut-out

Most of the problems with warped wood are taken care off when it is assembled.  The sides are straightened when they slot into the tight dadoes, and the front is pulled straight when it's screwed to the sides.  It's not completely straight, but it's close.

The base is 7mm thick ply and seems to be sturdy enough.  I loaded it up with 50 kg of text books and it held all right.  Initially I planned to use cheap drawer runners but they were terrible and and too unstable.  They might be OK for smaller drawers, but for something 2 by 3 feet they are useless.  I settled on full extension drawer runners from Hafele. They are smooth and work beautifully.  www.elraco.com.au had them at a decent price, and I wish I could have bought more just to get the price break at 10 units.

It's all still  a work in process, but I'll post more when I'm done.