Tables are addicting

Since starting these Sunday meetings, we have challenged ourselves to complete a project during the day. Looking back, I can say we have been fairly successful. At this point it's becoming harder to see the road behind, but we see an endless road ahead. The garage is really starting to come together and now there are lots of little projects related to the main ones, many of which we work on during the week.

While this blog is only updated weekly, some of the smaller things that are in the gallery and posted here were completed on other days.

This Sunday we had a new guest, Rafal. He was part of the Engineering Design Team (EDT - www.chicagoedt.org) with us. Rafal was also kind enough to bring over a 12 pack of beer which we promptly consumed.




Here is Rafal at the left, helping Leeder build the band saw table.



Leeder desperately wishing the table was perfectly level. Too bad for him there's no flat reference surface to be found anywhere in the garage, hah!

Another project we are working on is to bring internet to the garage. With my father's help, we ran 4 ethernet cables, each 125 feet from the basement where the main switch and router are located all the way to the garage. There, I installed a patch panel and made a homemade wall rack.



Wiring the patch panel. Since my cheap Monoprice RJ45 (ethernet cable) crimper, stripper and cutter doesn't come with extra blades, nor does anyone sell these specialty blades, even Monoprice itself, I was forced to use the box cutter and pliers to substitute. Their recommendation was to buy a new tool. What a load of bull.



Close-up of the panel back which is almost complete.



Blurry punch tool in action!





The panel is mirrored so that the first 6 ports are in and the last 6 ports are out.



Here are the materials for the rack purchased from McMaster-Carr (<3).

Actual rack mount hole locations are 1.25in apart for every other hole, with a gap of 0.5in between each set of 3 holes. The picture stolen from Wikipedia shows it (Edit: the picture was transparent and not showing the values. Please follow the link instead):

Wall Rack mount dimensions

However, using perforated angle framing is a good approximation.









Attached to wall and with patch panel mounted.



Ethernet cables plugged in.

There is a whole series of pictures that show how the RJ45 connectors were added to the cable, but as this post is getting too large, I will save that for another post if anyone sends me a request.