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