1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:09,760 There are so many cool hobbies these days. Content creation, 3D printing, wood carving, robotics, jewelry making, kombucha brewing, 2 00:00:09,760 --> 00:00:14,240 and you name it. And there's affordable tools available on online markets, not to mention 3 00:00:14,240 --> 00:00:19,280 expert guidance for free on YouTube. The barriers to entry are lower than ever. 4 00:00:19,280 --> 00:00:26,320 There's only one small problem. Hobbies take up space, and finding real estate on your already 5 00:00:26,320 --> 00:00:32,880 crowded desktop can be a real challenge. So, when our sponsor Flexyspot was like, 6 00:00:32,880 --> 00:00:37,840 Dude, what if you just had a second desktop? The hobbyist to me was like, 7 00:00:37,840 --> 00:00:45,680 Heck yeah! Look how awesome this is! What if you could use a sit-stand desk to fit one hobby 8 00:00:45,680 --> 00:00:53,200 up and out of the way, giving you a whole new space for second hobby? It's a crazy idea, but 9 00:00:53,280 --> 00:01:00,080 Crazy's his middle name. Let's see how he built it. Well, my middle, I thought the line was, it's your middle name. My middle name's Gabriel. 10 00:01:00,080 --> 00:01:01,120 Doesn't matter, roll the thing. 11 00:01:11,280 --> 00:01:15,520 The first thing we need is a sturdy standing desk with as much vertical lift as we can get, 12 00:01:15,520 --> 00:01:18,880 so we're not bonking our head on one desktop while we're trying to work on the other one. 13 00:01:19,040 --> 00:01:25,600 Ah, we chose the E7 Plus with this dark bamboo top. It's surprisingly affordable for a premium 14 00:01:25,600 --> 00:01:32,320 four-post desk. It adjusts all the way from Lucas height down to Linus height and has a static load 15 00:01:32,320 --> 00:01:38,240 limit of 540 pounds. All we need to do is work out a way to mount a second more stationary desktop 16 00:01:38,240 --> 00:01:44,080 under this one. Now, contrary to what certain writers may have put in my mouth to say, 17 00:01:44,080 --> 00:01:49,520 this is obviously too short for me. So what we need to do then, we're going to need to 18 00:01:49,520 --> 00:01:55,440 build some kind of base to lift our E7 legs up off the floor. And if we're going to do that, 19 00:01:55,440 --> 00:01:58,960 well, then that same base might as well support the stationary desktop, 20 00:01:58,960 --> 00:02:02,640 and maybe we can figure out some shelving to lift up out of the desk. 21 00:02:03,200 --> 00:02:10,080 Sounds like we need to spend some quality time with Fusion. If by we you mean you, then yes, we do. 22 00:02:10,080 --> 00:02:14,240 Fusion lets us directly import product models from McMaster car, which is where we'll be 23 00:02:14,240 --> 00:02:18,480 buying our extrusion from. So we don't have to spend a lot of time modeling all the fiddly little 24 00:02:18,480 --> 00:02:22,880 details. Once our design is roughed out, we can spend some quality time on the chopper. 25 00:02:27,920 --> 00:02:31,280 We're also going to get a ton of brackets to connect everything, 26 00:02:31,280 --> 00:02:36,080 but at 6 to 12 bucks a pop, the costs add up quickly. We just made our own. We've already 27 00:02:36,080 --> 00:02:41,120 got the tools. And because our upper desktop needs to sort of couple up to the lower one, 28 00:02:41,120 --> 00:02:46,160 we also have to modify it to make room for the legs, the motors, and our little shelf assembly 29 00:02:46,160 --> 00:02:51,280 here. Bamboo is technically grass, but it machines pretty much like wood. And oh, that's not good. 30 00:02:52,000 --> 00:02:58,080 It turns out that this dark bamboo top that FlexiSpot sent us uses a pretty common construction 31 00:02:58,080 --> 00:03:04,080 technique to save on material costs and weight around the perimeter. It's built with cross 32 00:03:04,080 --> 00:03:09,120 laminated bamboo. That's three layers of bamboo strips that are oriented perpendicularly. So 33 00:03:09,120 --> 00:03:14,960 our legs, monitor arms, and headphone hangers may have something solid to grab into. But in the 34 00:03:14,960 --> 00:03:20,080 middle of the desktop is this rigid cardboard honeycomb structure. But I wouldn't necessarily 35 00:03:20,080 --> 00:03:25,760 freak out about that. FlexiSpot's version of this construction technique uses a thicker bamboo 36 00:03:25,760 --> 00:03:31,280 outer layer compared to this lackluster Swedish example that's made of fiber and chipboard. 37 00:03:31,280 --> 00:03:36,160 It also uses a noticeably denser honeycomb pattern, which further contributes to its improved 38 00:03:36,160 --> 00:03:40,960 strength. So realistically, this would have been fine if we weren't trying to do something crazy, 39 00:03:40,960 --> 00:03:46,560 like carve giant chunks out of it to make a double decker desk. Anyway, lesson learned. 40 00:03:46,560 --> 00:03:52,240 So we asked FlexiSpot to send over a couple of their light bamboo tops. These are a little on 41 00:03:52,240 --> 00:03:56,480 the thinner side, which is actually good for us because it means less wasted space when we've 42 00:03:56,480 --> 00:04:02,800 got them together. And they use three layers of bamboo throughout. So we took these and got back 43 00:04:02,800 --> 00:04:07,200 to work while FlexiSpot tweets their website so it's easier to pick the right material for our 44 00:04:07,200 --> 00:04:22,480 purposes next time. Let's try again. That should work awesome. But we're gonna need a way to hold 45 00:04:22,560 --> 00:04:29,600 it in place. Let's talk about the thing that, which all of your will belong to us, the base. 46 00:04:31,120 --> 00:04:38,160 This aluminum extrusion goes together with these bolts, along with T's nuts and these angle brackets 47 00:04:38,160 --> 00:04:42,160 that we made earlier. If you're going to do something like this, by the way, do yourself a 48 00:04:42,160 --> 00:04:48,480 favor and spend a little extra to get these self aligning roll in T nuts, the ones with the ball 49 00:04:48,480 --> 00:04:52,560 spring. These ones can be inserted or removed through the slot rather than only fitting through 50 00:04:52,560 --> 00:04:57,440 the ends, which is great when you discover that you're bad at counting. And they stay in place 51 00:04:57,440 --> 00:05:02,000 once you've got them where you want them. These things are going to save you a ton of time. 52 00:05:02,000 --> 00:05:05,200 Which is good because you're going to need that time to get everything lined up and perfectly 53 00:05:05,200 --> 00:05:16,480 square. Nice cargo pants. Thank you. LTTstore.com. Yeah. Nice screwdriver. Thanks. Why am I not 54 00:05:16,480 --> 00:05:22,080 able to do this? Is this still fighting me? Yeah. You saved me some money on the brackets that we 55 00:05:22,080 --> 00:05:28,800 made those. Does that really save us money? It actually did. Huge. About 60 or 70 of them in 56 00:05:28,800 --> 00:05:34,000 about four hours. As we struggle through this, I'm reminded of the system that I use for furniture 57 00:05:34,000 --> 00:05:39,200 that I've obtained that no longer has instructions. I saw this little X on here and I was like, oh, 58 00:05:39,200 --> 00:05:42,800 I bet this would be a lot easier if we did that thing that I usually do, where I'll just take 59 00:05:42,880 --> 00:05:48,640 mating surfaces and I'll put like a little A and an A and then I'll put like a little B 60 00:05:48,640 --> 00:05:52,720 and a B. And that way it's like really obvious how everything goes together. We're going to do it 61 00:05:52,720 --> 00:05:59,520 this way. Which pieces go where again? The good news is we're about halfway done assembling it. 62 00:05:59,520 --> 00:06:05,280 The bad news is we have to undo about half of what we've done so far because this is, yeah, 63 00:06:05,280 --> 00:06:09,760 that needs to go. Yep. There we go. Wait, are we supposed to slide the acrylic in before we put 64 00:06:09,840 --> 00:06:18,720 this top piece on? Yep. Oh, great. I guess I will talk about the acrylic then. On its own, 65 00:06:18,720 --> 00:06:23,520 the extruded aluminum looks a little industrial. So we used our laser cutter to make these 66 00:06:23,520 --> 00:06:29,200 acrylic panels that will kind of float in the slots and then we've got a rubber gasket to help 67 00:06:29,200 --> 00:06:36,720 hold them in place. So it just goes in a little something like J and A. If you don't have a laser 68 00:06:36,720 --> 00:06:41,360 cutter, you can use a scoring tool like this guy and just kind of snap the plastic like cutting 69 00:06:41,360 --> 00:06:46,800 glass. It always feels a little sketchy, but it doesn't work. Let's see. Oh, that sounds awful. 70 00:06:51,920 --> 00:06:56,960 Oh, nice. And do I need a tool to stuff it in there? Yeah, you can use something to help it down in. 71 00:06:59,600 --> 00:07:04,160 Anywho, with that out of the way, it's time to slide our flexi spot desk. 72 00:07:04,240 --> 00:07:15,760 Ah, into place. Okay. Jordan, this is going to go down low enough to be a desk, right? 73 00:07:16,720 --> 00:07:22,400 Yes, this is the upper desk. Oh, good. Right? Excellent. Yeah. No, yeah, that makes 74 00:07:22,400 --> 00:07:29,440 total sad. I forgot. Yeah, no, that's right. Yep. Nobody panic. We learned. Yeah, I learned my lesson 75 00:07:29,440 --> 00:07:36,560 this time. Oh, no, no. Oh, these are too long. No, they went through the top. But it did go through 76 00:07:36,560 --> 00:07:42,960 a bit. Oh, no. You're going to want to do that. Oh, man. Who the hell put me? I did this. What the 77 00:07:42,960 --> 00:07:48,880 heck, dude? Justin was upset with this thing, so it got a little... Ah! Did I just strip it? Oh, no. 78 00:07:49,680 --> 00:07:56,320 Blind-ass. Do you even want to put it in like this? That's not the right hole. What? 79 00:08:03,280 --> 00:08:09,760 The wrong pieces there. At least that's what it appears to be. Those front two just got to go... 80 00:08:10,640 --> 00:08:13,840 because we used the one side as reference. It looks like we built the same side twice. 81 00:08:14,720 --> 00:08:16,080 Come on, that was smooth. 82 00:08:18,320 --> 00:08:22,080 Hey, before we take it all apart, though, we could have a quick look at how low it goes. 83 00:08:22,080 --> 00:08:27,200 That's like, that's a desk-ass desk right there. Yeah. And the other one's going to 84 00:08:27,920 --> 00:08:30,240 go right in there like that. Okay, now let's take it all apart. 85 00:08:32,800 --> 00:08:35,600 Oh, yeah. Yeah, there we go. Keep it coming, keep it coming. 86 00:08:38,000 --> 00:08:42,000 All right. Hey. Hey. We're back to where we were 20 minutes ago. 87 00:08:43,840 --> 00:08:47,680 It's time to try them, guys. And we've leveled up, 88 00:08:50,320 --> 00:08:58,960 but because it's level now. Okay. Tempers are running hot as the LTG team attempts to build a desk. 89 00:09:01,120 --> 00:09:02,880 So let's put that in there. Okay. 90 00:09:06,400 --> 00:09:13,200 Ah, you're pretty good. Let's go. This is legitimately gonna look really cool. 91 00:09:13,200 --> 00:09:19,920 I wasn't sure until now. This is the moment. Is this screw supposed to... Oh, yeah, there. Oh, no. 92 00:09:23,040 --> 00:09:25,280 What? How sure are you that these are the right lengths, Justin? 93 00:09:28,400 --> 00:09:33,600 Question for you, though. We chopped off the legs. Is that going to avoid the 15-year warranty? 94 00:09:34,160 --> 00:09:37,680 And the 30-day risk-free trial. Speaking of voided warranties, let's 95 00:09:38,880 --> 00:09:42,800 see if we can get a warranty replacement on those screws. Justin, did you find the right length? 96 00:09:42,880 --> 00:09:47,280 Fun fact, they weren't the wrong length. We have the wrong T-nut. Do we have any of these T-nuts? 97 00:09:47,280 --> 00:09:51,440 Yes. It was these ones here because we did a metric screws that were the right length. 98 00:09:51,440 --> 00:09:55,840 Everything else is imperial. But wait, there's more. You probably noticed that we have some cutouts in 99 00:09:55,840 --> 00:10:02,400 our desk. Some of them are pretty obvious. They're for the legs to retract into, but this one is 100 00:10:02,400 --> 00:10:07,760 really cool. It's going to be for a couple of shelves that pop out as our desk transforms. But 101 00:10:07,760 --> 00:10:12,080 before we can do that, we've got two important pieces we still need to install. Pegboard is an 102 00:10:12,080 --> 00:10:16,800 inexpensive way to add flexible storage to your workspace. So we're going to put a couple of 103 00:10:16,800 --> 00:10:22,160 panels on the back of our upper desktop. The top one is going to help us organize our hobby tools 104 00:10:22,160 --> 00:10:27,920 and supplies. And we'll put that on in a minute because first, I'm going to put on the bottom one, 105 00:10:27,920 --> 00:10:35,200 which naturally has an entire water-cooled PC mounted to the back of it, which limits our use 106 00:10:35,200 --> 00:10:41,040 of the peg holes a little bit. But hey, look, look how cool it is. And it even has a little 107 00:10:41,040 --> 00:10:44,880 viewport window so you can make sure that your coolant levels are okay. It's like those old school 108 00:10:44,880 --> 00:10:50,640 desks with the pullout keyboard drawer, except you've got like the entire desktop and it doesn't 109 00:10:50,640 --> 00:10:57,200 pull out. That's why it has three kids like me. Is this strong enough? Yes. It's totally stable. 110 00:10:57,200 --> 00:11:01,360 Yeah. I'm kind of surprised, to be honest with you. We talked to the editor-in-chief about this, 111 00:11:01,360 --> 00:11:07,600 and they were okay with this too. Dude. So our project crap and everything, all this, 112 00:11:08,560 --> 00:11:16,000 boom, out of the way. And this is awesome. This gap in the back here is because that's where our 113 00:11:16,000 --> 00:11:23,920 monitor is going to be. Is there a reason we used a crewy monitor? It fit. Okay. Let's put on the 114 00:11:23,920 --> 00:11:33,200 shelves. Yeah. Okay. So this goes in here and all the holes are filled. Yep. So you see where 115 00:11:33,200 --> 00:11:40,720 those two pegs are? One there, one there. Oh yeah. Aim for the center of those. Okay. So aim for where 116 00:11:40,720 --> 00:11:46,800 you filled the holes. Yes. How exact does this need to be? It should be okay. Or if we want to make 117 00:11:46,800 --> 00:11:50,720 this easier. No, we don't. We love when things are difficult. That's why we do them the way that we 118 00:11:50,720 --> 00:11:55,200 do them. All right. Well, at least two of the pilot holes line up. Okay. Is that enough pilot holes? 119 00:11:56,800 --> 00:12:01,680 Yeah. We're kind of at redneck engineering here, not actual engineering. Well, how the 120 00:12:01,680 --> 00:12:07,440 devil are we supposed to screw that one in? Oh, this is cool. That's kind of like a nice finishing 121 00:12:07,440 --> 00:12:12,560 touch to it. Look at the fuzzy tape. Just occurred to me. It wouldn't be very LTT of me to not talk 122 00:12:12,560 --> 00:12:17,040 about our computer specs a little bit. We've gone with Intel for this one, I guess because 123 00:12:17,040 --> 00:12:23,840 we weren't using those chips for anything. 32 gigs of G-Skill DER 5000. We've got a 4090 124 00:12:23,840 --> 00:12:28,800 and enough liquid cooling. Actually, yeah, this should be able to handle it just fine. 125 00:12:28,880 --> 00:12:33,760 Triple 120 millimeters. Yeah, it was all running at about 60, 70 degrees. It was fine. 126 00:12:34,640 --> 00:12:39,120 Awesome. This is legitimately one of the best uses of our screwdriver. Sometimes when you're 127 00:12:39,120 --> 00:12:44,320 using a wood screw or a self-tapper, it can be really hard to get the ratchet to go before it 128 00:12:44,320 --> 00:12:49,280 actually bites. But because of our super low back force, we can totally do that, which helps you 129 00:12:49,280 --> 00:12:53,680 get the screw started. Dude, okay, can we do a quick test and just make sure that the shelves 130 00:12:53,680 --> 00:12:59,440 clear? Not with Justin in there ideally. Heck yeah. And I should not have my fingers here, right? 131 00:12:59,440 --> 00:13:11,200 No. Not for long at least. All right. So here I am at my project desk. Dude, this is so sick. 132 00:13:11,200 --> 00:13:16,800 A little bit of cable management here. Some, you know, nice accessories and stuff around it yet. 133 00:13:17,440 --> 00:13:21,440 Yeah. Next time you see it, we'll have it pretty. 134 00:13:24,240 --> 00:13:33,120 Okay. This is pretty sick. Wow. With all the finishing touches, dude, this looks great. 135 00:13:33,120 --> 00:13:39,040 Turned out pretty good. Oh, brilliant. Low profile keyboard. 136 00:13:39,040 --> 00:13:45,040 Well, you got to watch out because there's the bars here. Yeah. Well, okay. Yeah. If you put it here, 137 00:13:45,040 --> 00:13:49,680 it could still be a problem. But as long as you put your keyboard and mouse in the safe zones, 138 00:13:49,680 --> 00:13:53,440 you can just leave them there and then you're flipping good to go. 139 00:13:56,000 --> 00:14:06,400 Dude, so many aspects of this worked out. No offense. Better than I expected. Like this, 140 00:14:06,400 --> 00:14:09,600 you guys saw me kind of like, was that going to be stable? Like, 141 00:14:09,920 --> 00:14:17,760 like, yeah, obviously I can get it to shift around a little bit, but that's not going anywhere. 142 00:14:17,760 --> 00:14:24,080 And the PC looks freaking awesome. Not that we'll ever see it, but if you wanted to do more of like 143 00:14:24,080 --> 00:14:30,160 a showcase wall mount PC that comes out when you lift the desk up, you totally could just by 144 00:14:30,160 --> 00:14:36,640 taking all of these and putting them on the other side. Also, love the use of magnetic 145 00:14:36,720 --> 00:14:41,440 cable management throughout to keep everything nice and tidy as it's going up and down. 146 00:14:41,440 --> 00:14:48,720 And are these pegboard accessories 3D printed? Yep. That is so flipping handy. I mean, out of 147 00:14:48,720 --> 00:14:54,640 reach, but by about only until, only until it comes down out. Like many standing desks, Flexi 148 00:14:54,640 --> 00:15:01,040 Spot does support a preconfigured sit and stand position. So it's just one button to go from 149 00:15:01,040 --> 00:15:07,520 gaming to getting back to whatever it is you're supposed to be doing right now. And what's probably 150 00:15:07,520 --> 00:15:14,880 the coolest part for me is that in its work mode, it's honestly not even as thick as some of the 151 00:15:14,880 --> 00:15:22,560 desk PCs that we've either built ourselves or bought from independent manufacturers. So flipping 152 00:15:22,960 --> 00:15:29,120 cool. How's the gaming experience though? Or wait? Oh dude, I didn't even notice this. 153 00:15:29,760 --> 00:15:35,200 So we got that RGB on the back instead of the PC, although with the amount of RGB on our PC, 154 00:15:35,200 --> 00:15:39,200 it probably could have just been the PC. So we put a frosted piece of acrylic here, 155 00:15:39,200 --> 00:15:46,240 so you just get like a cool RGB underglow effect. And Jordan did a quite adequate job of breaking 156 00:15:46,240 --> 00:15:50,960 off the top of the sheet by hand up in the writer's den earlier. Dude, this is so cool. 157 00:15:51,200 --> 00:16:01,200 It's actually not that impractical. I'm serious though. I thought we'd give up so much of our 158 00:16:01,200 --> 00:16:07,680 space to bulky contraptions for making it go up and down that we wouldn't gain back enough to be 159 00:16:07,680 --> 00:16:11,920 worth it. No, it's pretty good. But we totally do. We could even go a little bit narrower if we got 160 00:16:11,920 --> 00:16:16,320 rid of the shelves, but the shelves are pretty cool. Honestly, I think the shelves are a feature 161 00:16:16,320 --> 00:16:22,320 not a bug. I really like this because it's a place for me to maybe if I had a higher profile now. 162 00:16:22,320 --> 00:16:27,360 So if I used a kind of a different approach to the design and I wanted to bring the desktop 163 00:16:27,360 --> 00:16:31,760 closer together, it would be somewhere that I could kind of stash my stuff when I know that 164 00:16:31,760 --> 00:16:36,560 I'm going to be putting it down. This is freaking awesome. How are we doing for frames here? 165 00:16:38,240 --> 00:16:42,800 Oh dude, she's running great. I think the RGB is a little distracting. 166 00:16:43,760 --> 00:16:50,480 Yeah. Okay. Realistically, that was more for the video. Okay. We recognize that putting a 167 00:16:50,480 --> 00:16:56,480 whack ton of RGB behind your monitor, probably not the best for your gaming immersiveness. 168 00:16:56,480 --> 00:17:00,240 I love that the cops just bring you a new car whenever you need one. The only problem is always 169 00:17:00,240 --> 00:17:05,920 the same style of car. No, every once in a while they show up with the SUV one. That's always a 170 00:17:05,920 --> 00:17:13,360 nice treat. That's true. You know what else is a nice treat? When you get your arms crushed 171 00:17:13,360 --> 00:17:17,600 by one of your colleagues because you're just trying to enjoy a little bit of gaming in the 172 00:17:17,600 --> 00:17:23,920 middle of the flipping day when you're supposed to be working. Thanks to FlexiSpot for sponsoring 173 00:17:23,920 --> 00:17:28,800 this video. Great job team. This is great execution. If you guys enjoyed this video, 174 00:17:28,800 --> 00:17:31,680 maybe go check out the time we originally built a desk PC. Oh my god. 175 00:17:36,960 --> 00:17:40,320 Oh what? Did you think I was going to keep talking? No, I'm done.