Assembling all the nuts bolts and hinges for the first time. Just keeping notes here on my Macbook
1. Drill holes can get ugly with this verneer wood from ponoko. If possible, have holes laser cut. If you do have to drill, drill into the surface that will be visible (i.e. the outer surface)…the wood on the inside will be splintered.
2. Hinge can’t open all the way because the screw heads bump against eachother
3. Need tiny nuts (or a taller lid) for the nut to fit on the bolt for the lid hinge. Otherwise there’s no room for the nuts. Glued in the bolts for now, not a great solution :\
4. Need 1/2″ bolts for the lid. 3/8″ is too short and 1″ is too long.
5. I’m able to mount the heatsink/fan. However, the challenges are that the height of this assembly needs to be somewhat exact, and very stable. Stability is doable if the size of the nuts lines up with expectations for the height. Otherwise you’ll need to find standoffs or just let the heat sink hang from the lid.
6. I’ve mounted the aluminum block. If the heat sink can be mounted securely, then insulation can be used to hold the heat sink in place, at least in the short term. We’ll have to test this out and see if it holds long term. IN the meantime, the search for brackets continues.
When drilling in veneer wood, drill a small pilot hole first, use pilot hole to guide actual size bit. Drill halfway, flip piece, drill through. This will reduce splintering and make a nice hole. It does take longer.
Thanks Tim, those are 2 great tips!
Tito
Really good tip on that, Tim! I’m marking that one down.
2 – Use flat head screws and countersink your holes. This lets things lie flush.
3 – See if you can use T-nuts for the far side of the screw. These are threaded tubes with a flange on one side. You drill to the outer diameter of the T-nut tube, push the T-nut in, and voila, you have a metal threaded hole in a piece of wood.
4 – Bolts can also be cut to length, though it is easy to bung up the threads when doing this. The bolt cutters you find on some wire stripping/crimping tools actually work remarkably well. If in doubt, pick up a small tap and die set and use the dies to re-chase threads after cutting a bolt to length. Tap and die sets are great tools to have, in any case.
5 & 6 – Not seeing the design issue that’s causing this. Do you have pictures?
Tom
Hey Tom!
Thanks for all the comments!
Looking up T-nuts now wow!! A great suggestion! Didn’t even know those exist but they are the elegant solution!
Tito