New electronics workbench build part 2

Finishing up the new elec­tron­ics work­bench build.

Completed electronics workbench build with shelves and lighting installed
Completed elec­tron­ics work­bench build with shelves and light­ing installed

As I men­tioned in my pre­vi­ous work­bench post, I had a bunch of 80/20 Inc. T‑slotted alu­minum fram­ing from a trade show dis­play that I built many years ago. I did some quick mea­sure­ments and decid­ed that I had enough mate­ri­als for a three tier adjustable shelv­ing unit that would be able to han­dle heavy loads.
I used a car­bide blade miter saw to cut the pieces to length and began assem­bly. For my 6 foot long (183 cm) table I decid­ed on three sup­ports for each shelve, with a full length piece across the bot­tom back with diag­o­nal supports.

80/20 aluminum bracing on the bottom back support.
80/20 alu­minum brac­ing on the bot­tom back support.

For shelves I was donat­ed a piece of  3/4″ (19 mm) lam­i­nat­ed ply­wood, that I was able to cut into three equal 16″ (40.64 cm) shelves just slight­ly longer than the workbench.

Angled view of shelve system on the workbench with LED lighting on.
Angled view of shelve sys­tem on the work­bench with LED light­ing on.

To bright­en up the work area I installed some flex­i­ble strip LED light­ing mount­ed in an U‑shaped alu­minum chan­nel. The strips are 24 volt DC and have around 20 indi­vid­ual LED’s per foot. I added a dif­fus­ing clear plas­tic strip to the alu­minum chan­nel to reduce the indi­vid­ual reflec­tions from each LED, and even the light dis­tri­b­u­tion bet­ter. The LED strips are dim­ma­ble, and I will adding an adjustable buck con­vert­er to set the bright­ness lev­el soon. I am cur­rent­ly using one side of my HP 6205C pow­er sup­ply to pow­er the LED’s and adjust brightness.

Workbench top and shelves already loaded with equipment.
Workbench top and shelves already loaded with equipment.

So far my plan is to use the bench for assem­bly equip­ment and tools. The first shelve for test equip­ment and bench com­put­er mon­i­tor. The sec­ond shelve for portable meters, pro­gram­ming mod­ules, con­sum­ables, easy access tools. And the top shelve for com­po­nent and parts storage.
The bench­top light­ed mag­ni­fi­er was installed on the left side of the bench, where I plan to do most of my sol­der­ing and testing.

Some of my recently constructed test equipment
Some of my recent­ly con­struct­ed test equip­ment from pre­vi­ous posts.

The elec­tron­ics work­bench is now ready for some new projects.
Coming soon:
6 dig­it nix­ie tube clock using an Arduinix shield from RobotPirate
7 seg­ment LED Atmega 328p clock with bat­tery back­up RTC (real time clock) IC

2 Replies to “New electronics workbench build part 2”

  1. I notice that you have some real­ly cool front pan­els on your kits. It would be great if you could add an arti­cle or just a com­ment or two on how you do these.

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