Tools
- Screwdriver
- Square (helpful)
Prepwork
Before we get started on the assembly process we are going to need to prep our slide nuts. The slide nuts are simply a 3d printed carrier that houses the nut to keep it aligned inside the T-slot. I like to print these in quantities of around 50. I also like to print them with a few raft layers under them. The print tends to have far less failures that way.
Place the nuts by press fitting them using pressure with a screwdriver or something similar.
Unless specified otherwise, these are used with the 1/2 inch screws everywhere in the assembly. When placing the screws, tighten them only slightly, we will tighten them down to set each section of the assembly once they are built.
Leg Assembly
Each of the legs should be assembled at the same time. The left leg is a mirror image of the right leg. The only difference is the right leg has the soldering Iron mount. You will need to get the cap from the soldering pen in the Soldering Station kit from ifixit. Two 3/4" screws are used to join these together.
To begin the assembly we will want to first slide the DoubleSideSupport Topper on the end of a 200mm piece of T-Slot. Place two slide nuts into the longer 300mm piece of T-slot. You will want to attach the nuts to the screws and try and slide them in but I found that to ultimately be a harder way to do it. Place the nuts approximately where you want them to be, place the first piece in place and then place the screws. A double leg support will be added to the front and the back. place 8 slide nuts in there approximate homes before placing them and the bolts that hold them on.
Next we add the corner brackets. Remember these are plastic and they will flex. We want to leverage that attribute. Use a square to indicate what the bottom plane is attach the corner brackets tightly but leave approximately 1/16 to 1/8 of an inch gap. When we add the last 200mm piece of T-Slot, tightening these down align everything easily. With those placed we can use a corner bracket as an alignment tool for the double leg supports. Tighten them down.
The completed assembly should look like this
The left leg assembly will look the same but mirrored and less the soldering Iron cap holder
Center Frame Assembly
Fan Control
The circuit here is pretty straight forward. We are using an Adafruit USB Type-C power delivery eval board to power our fan. We need to solder wires to the board which go to the fan and the rocker switch needs to be placed inline with one of those wires.
Note that the eval board simply slides into the grooves on the bottom of the switch drawer. The wires go out of the hole on the side of the housing/mount. You will want to make sure you either add a connector system to the end of these wires or put them through here before soldering them to the fan. Once the drawer is placed it can be secured in place using a 1/4" in 6-32 screw.
The Fan
In the images below you will see the fan has heated inserts where the mounting holes are. I put those in and do recommend it as it makes assemlby much easier than trying to reach around with nuts and make sure they get and stay tight.
To assemble this first place the fan finger guard over the cooresponding holes on the Fan Cover Front. Place both of these pieces over the fan and attach. Make sure that the fan is oriented correctly so that it will pull the air rather than blow it. The fan I chose blows from the side with the motor. You will have to cut down the carbon filter to fit, but this is easily done with scissors. It gets installed inside the rear fan cover and then attached to the back of the fan.
Putting it all together
Using the same techniques as above we can assemble the parts in the images below together.
I recommend attaching the fan to the two vertical 300mm pieces of T-slot first. It will need to slide for final adjustment. You will need to have two slider nuts placed inbetween the corner brackets on the right leg. These will be what the switch attaches to. Make sure they are in there before putting on the second Corner bracket. Again, I recommend using the square to align the corner brackets. Once this is done attach that portion of the assembly to the long 600mm piece of T-Slot that runs across the bottom. You will need this to slide for now. This is where you should slide the fan down into its final position and tighten it. If you tighten down the switch, make sure it is lower than the top of the fan assembly on the vertical T-slot it mounts to. The front fan cover will over lap the T-slot on the bottom, the rear cover should rest on top of it. Attach the solder station mount last. You will want this to slide for now as well.
Here are some additional Images that may help.
Attach the leg assemblies to the Center Frame Assembly
In the images you can see that I placed the slide nuts on the bolts already. I will tell you that I did try to just slide them in using this configuration and it was a frustrating ordeal. I highly recommend placing the nuts then light up the corner brackets and then attach the screw. You can also try placing the screw in the slide nut and then sliding it into the corner bracket but I also found that it liked to bind up a lot that way too. If you choose this, I recommend pushing the nut with the tip of the screwdriver at the bottom of the T-Slot. After all of the corner brackets are tightened, then tighten down the Solder Station Mount.
We have not added the top 600mm T-slot yet because we stil have to install the Multiboard Assembly.
Here are some additional Images that may help.
Multiboard Assembly
The Multiboard assemlby consists of 3 panels. They are connected using clips. The image below shows how they connect together. Please note that I did try to place all of my Hex pieces first, I ended up moving some of them.
Remember that some the hex pieces were moved, but this gives you a good idea of what I go through next.
The Hex pieces snap into the multiboard. There are six connection points where this attaches to the frame assembly. The go in from the front. The 3/4 in screw goes in from the front, through a spacer, and then into a slider nut on in the T-Slot. Notice that even though we use the bottom corners of the panel, the top ones are the second row.
The hex pieces that are used for the tool mounts go in from the back. A screw goes in from the front and into a nut that settles into the slot on them.
This image shows their final postions for my build.
Here are some additional Images that may help.
The Hand Tool Holders
The Test Lead Holder
Multimeter Holder
Moray Ifixit Kit Holder
You are going to want to insert this kit and slide it onto the holder before installing anything more on the left. Once you do, there is not any room left to do so. This works out in the sense that the other installed items actually lock it in and prevent that kit from walking away, at least as a whole.
Flux Pen Holder
Solder Sucker Holder
Solder Holder
Notice that the left side of this holder uses the 1/2" screw, while the other end, (side with the solder wick) uses the 3/4" screw. Also, since the center spindle doesn’t need to spin, you can tighten down each part of the spindle tightly to each mount. When solder needs to be installed, only one Hex Snap needs to be removed to allow you to pull the assembly apart.
Mounting the Multiboard Assembly
You can see in the image that I had already installed the slider nut and did try to slide this on from above. I won’t tell you how this ended up making me feel because while this is a forum, it’s not that kind of forum.
I would suggest that you lay the Center Frame flat on the table, insert the slide nuts into the T-Slot and put them approximately where they need to go. Place the spacers on top of them, then lay the Multiboard Assembly over that adding a screw to each attachment point.
The Wire Bar Assembly
This time you will need to place the slider nut between the tabs on the mounting leg so they have to go on and slide into the T-slot. You will want to do this before you attach the final 600mm T-slot to the assembly. This way you can get everything placed before capping off the ends with covers.
You need three core pieces in the center, wrap them with four pieces of the Bar Face part, then slide the ends into the mounting leg.
All that is left is to use the skills we have already developed in previous steps to attach the Top 600mm T-slot to the top. Remember to add you caps and such first so when you tighten down the screws the parts get locked in place.
Congratulations! You made it through! Images of your builds would make me very happy. I love to see my work replicated and if you feel like you would be willing to share, please post those images and stories here!