An oscilloscope with its probes stored in drawers below it

Clever Scope Probe Drawers Keep Your Workbench Tidy

May 1, 2022 by Robin Kearey 20 Comments

Probes are an essential component of a good oscilloscope system, but they have the nasty habit of cluttering up your workbench. If you have a four-channel scope, it’s not just several meters of cable that get in the way everywhere, but also four sets of all those little clips, springs, cable markers, and adjustment screwdrivers that need to be stored safely.

[Matt Mets] came up with a clever solution to this problem: a 3D printed cable organizer that neatly fits below your scope. It has four drawers, each of which has enough space to store a complete probe and a little compartment for all its accessories. A cable cutout at the front allows you to keep the probes plugged in even when they’re not in use.

It’s a beautifully simple solution to a common problem, and with the STL files available on Printables anyone with a cluttered workbench can build one for themselves. If, however, you’d like to keep those probes even closer at hand, have a look at these probe caddies. Continue reading “Clever Scope Probe Drawers Keep Your Workbench Tidy” →

Smarter-than-wood Saw Blade Makes Perfect Foldable Joints

May 15, 2015 by Rick Osgood 53 Comments

[Andrew Klein] knows the pain of building drawers from plywood. It can be a pain to get all of the pieces measured and cut just right. Then you have to line them up, glue them together, and clamp them perfectly. It’s time-consuming and frustrating. Then one day it hit him that he might be able to make the whole process much easier using a custom saw blade.

The the video below, [Andrew] does a great job explaining how the concept works using a piece of paper. The trick is that the plywood must be cut in a very specific shape. This shape results in the plywood just barely being held together, almost as if it’s hinged. The resulting groove can then be filled with wood glue, and the plywood is folded over on itself. This folding process leaves no gaps in the wood and results in a strong joint. Luckily this special shape can be cut with a specialized saw blade.

This new process removes the requirement of having five separate pieces for a drawer. Instead, only four cuts are needed on a single piece of square plywood. The corners are then removed with a razor blade and all four sides are folded up and into place. [Andrew] shows that his prototype blade needs a little bit of work, but he’s so hopeful that this new invention will be useful to others. Continue reading “Smarter-than-wood Saw Blade Makes Perfect Foldable Joints” →

This Cube Of Playroom Drawers Is Quite Puzzling

October 11, 2011 by Mike Szczys 18 Comments

If you’re looking for a piece of custom furniture to anchor your child’s playroom, this Rubik’s cube chest of drawers is just the thing. [Makendo] went the extra couple of miles on the project, building the entire thing from scratch and adding one clever feature after another to make it something special.

It’s made up of three plywood boxes, open on one side to accept a plywood drawer. The drawers were carefully fitted so that it is difficult to see which side is actually the drawer face. [Makendo] even routed a hash-mark of grooves into each face of the cube to make it look like the seams that make up the 9×9 grid of colored squares. Speaking of those colors, the “stickers” themselves are made of 1/4″ plywood and are not permanently affixed. Each is held on with a magnet plus a pair of dowels to keep it from spinning. This way you can rearrange the colors as often as you please.

Each layer of the cube spins thanks to some lazy susan bearings. [Makendo] didn’t want to add too much distance between the different modules so he routed out each side to fit the circular hardware. As a final touch, the drawers themselves can be locked in place using a dowel underneath one of the colored squares. We’ve embedded a video of the cube at play after the break.

Continue reading “This Cube Of Playroom Drawers Is Quite Puzzling” →

Dresser Tool Chest Isn’t As Ghetto As You’d Think

October 19, 2009 by Phil Burgess 43 Comments

toolchest

A dedicated rolling chest for one’s tools is among the most indulgent yet worthwhile acquisitions. Having everything mobile and organized for quick access improves efficiency and keeps the shop tidy. But holy living crap, have you priced these things? Even a mediocre setup costs more than the gross national product of some small nations!

Here’s a project that tarts up a dresser into a passable tool chest. Using casters, modern drawer pulls and a tidy paint job, they turn a nasty old dresser into something presentable. It’s nowhere near as slick as the commercial units…no ball bearing glides, not chemical resistant, and your macho grease monkey friends will just roll their eyes…but if you’d rather spend your hard-earned money on more and better tools than a pretty box to put them in, this might be just the thing. From across the room, you’d hardly know the difference.

A good tool chest will include several shallow drawers so that all the tools are visible at a glance and not buried in a jumble. If searching for a piece of furniture to re-use, look for something with multiple slim drawers rather than just a few deep ones; a large jewelry chest might work well.

[via Craftynest]