Further Extraction

The first part of this project got piping most of the way round the garage and a lot of the more difficult sections in place. Once the pipe was extended along the other side of the garage as well, there was still space for the pile of clamps that usually fall over when trying to take one to be stored properly underneath. 

In addition the down pipes for the tools were added and the blast gates installed.

The gates allow air flow to be controlled so only one part is open, allowing maximum extraction from which ever tool is being used. It's possible to close the whole system off, but it's not really helpful...

There are a few more things to be added like a split pipe to the tablesaw to draw dust from the back of the blade near the riving knife, as well as a better means to collect dust from behind the radial arm saw.

LAN In A Box - Part 10, The Cable Finale (Almost)

The last of the cabling took two sessions and actually went pretty quickly. So much so I didn't take that many pictures because it didn't seem interesting enough. 

Here's some patched cables.

Here are all of the patched cables.

There was one minor flaw I noticed really a little late in the day. The new patch panel has it's holes at the outer edge of the U. The old on didn't and had it's mounting holes in the center of the U. As a result, next time the sides pieces are out they'll have to be redrilled for the new panel, but fortunately it's hardly impossibly difficult to do.

This was mean't to be the last update before the first sue of LIAB in the wild, but the PSU died while trying to install the OS so delayed everything, the network side will be ready, but the server itself is probably going to be done at the event.

LAN In A Box - Part 9, Power Up!

 I forgot to take a picture of the brackets for the power supply, but they weren't really all the interesting to see being made. They're more spare aluminium bend round and hammered to fit closer, then screwed and pop riveted into place to allow it to be removed, but still held securely, even to the thin ply on the back.

One thing I had forgotten to do earlier was make the hole for the power cable to actually get to the PSU, as well as the Wireless AP.

Forstner and Festool bit to the rescue! One wasn't enough, so had to double up and make it wider for the kettle plug to get through.

The ideal position for the AP had to be near the top as the box was going to be on the floor, having the AP on the floor wasn't going to help a great deal.

Mounting it at the top in a position where the antenna can fold up also kept it well out of the way of everything inside knocking it when packing. After finding the position where the antenna flipped up and didnt hit the front/lid I made a shelf when a couple of notches to locate the feet of the AP.

The shelf fastened to the side of the box...

And the AP sit's on top. The only down side is that the AP can still fall of the shelf and there's no easy way to fix the AP from underneath without damaging the casing itself.

The solution is a hook shaped bracket, which in retrospect didn't need to be hooked, it could have been a loop as it has to be unscrewed to remove the AP anyway, but never mind.

Here, the antenna is up and the AP fully mounted the the door roughly in place with no collision.

With all the main hardware mounted (at least that I had at the time), one major thing remained, how to power the server on. Quite a few years ago I started making a server case from scratch using aluminium L section and a lot of head scratching. It had a few neat features, one of which was a toaster-mount dvd drive in the top of the case.

 Because the server case took longer to make than it had a use for (I went to rack mounting for my servers) the Buglin switch i bought never actually got used for more than testing. This seems like a good idea to use it, rather than it just sit in a box.

The switch itself has a thread shallower than the thickness of the wood, once again forstner bits to make the hole and recess sorted the problem.

And mounted!

Made a lot of progress in this visit to my parents, back to the homestead to continue with cabling, order parts and setup the server. Unfortunately the spare PSU I had only has a 4 pin 12V connector to the motherboard, but the board itself has an 8 pin. Will be buying an adapter for 4-pin and molex to 8pin connector soon.