After buying my 3D printer, I knew I would need a place for it to sit. Considering I have cats and enclosed 3D printers already have their own benefits, I opted to build an enclosure. Since I wanted the printer to be at my waist height and we had an old cubby cabinet we wanted to replace anyways, I figured I would combine these needs into a single large combination cabinet/3D printer enclosure. I'm a fan of building vertically and preserving the real estate (maybe Starship Titanic's SGT class was onto something!). I do tend get ambitious and carried away with these things...
The old cubby cabinet:
I immediately got to work in some CAD software after I had ordered the printer. It took several iterations to get something that maximized utility and constructability. I think there is something really valuable in going through the whole process of budgeting -> design -> purchasing parts -> construction. It took me longer than I care to admit to understand this, but learning to design things less as "Platonic forms" and more based upon the tools available for the actual construction process is its own skill. I have heard plenty of complaints about this from people working in machine shops trying to manufacture the designs sent down by engineers.
Today is the first day of construction. I still maintain a very limited set of construction tools as I don't have the space or budget for more than what is absolutely necessary. Having learned from past mistakes that I can't exactly rely on a steady hand to make very long straight cuts, I did opt to buy a Kreg Accu-Cut for making such cuts. It allows me to slice up 4x8 foot plywood with reasonable precision, but it is time consuming. The doors for this cabinet require dozens of 3 and 4 inch thick slices of 1/4 plywood and marking and cutting each one takes much longer than using a table saw. This cabinet requires all those pieces entirely because of my limited tools. I want to have doors with acrylic panes inside them, but every design I've seen online either requires a router, table saw, or both, and I have neither. So my design involves sort of "building the door around the pane" using strips of wood that are of the exact same thickness as the panes I am using. Basically: its a Plexiglass sandwich.
Lots more to do!