WEBVTT 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, 00:00:09.760 --> 00:00:14.240 and you name it. And there's affordable tools available on online markets, not to mention 00:00:14.240 --> 00:00:19.280 expert guidance for free on YouTube. The barriers to entry are lower than ever. 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 00:00:26.320 --> 00:00:32.880 crowded desktop can be a real challenge. So, when our sponsor Flexyspot was like, 00:00:32.880 --> 00:00:37.840 Dude, what if you just had a second desktop? The hobbyist to me was like, 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 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 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. 00:01:00.080 --> 00:01:01.120 Doesn't matter, roll the thing. 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, 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. 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 00:01:55.440 --> 00:01:58.960 well, then that same base might as well support the stationary desktop, 00:01:58.960 --> 00:02:02.640 and maybe we can figure out some shelving to lift up out of the desk. 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. 00:02:10.080 --> 00:02:14.240 Fusion lets us directly import product models from McMaster car, which is where we'll be 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 00:02:18.480 --> 00:02:22.880 details. Once our design is roughed out, we can spend some quality time on the chopper. 00:02:27.920 --> 00:02:31.280 We're also going to get a ton of brackets to connect everything, 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 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, 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 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. 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 00:02:58.080 --> 00:03:04.080 technique to save on material costs and weight around the perimeter. It's built with cross 00:03:04.080 --> 00:03:09.120 laminated bamboo. That's three layers of bamboo strips that are oriented perpendicularly. So 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 00:03:14.960 --> 00:03:20.080 middle of the desktop is this rigid cardboard honeycomb structure. But I wouldn't necessarily 00:03:20.080 --> 00:03:25.760 freak out about that. FlexiSpot's version of this construction technique uses a thicker bamboo 00:03:25.760 --> 00:03:31.280 outer layer compared to this lackluster Swedish example that's made of fiber and chipboard. 00:03:31.280 --> 00:03:36.160 It also uses a noticeably denser honeycomb pattern, which further contributes to its improved 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, 00:03:40.960 --> 00:03:46.560 like carve giant chunks out of it to make a double decker desk. Anyway, lesson learned. 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 00:04:48.480 --> 00:04:52.560 spring. These ones can be inserted or removed through the slot rather than only fitting through 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 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. 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 00:05:05.200 --> 00:05:16.480 square. Nice cargo pants. Thank you. LTTstore.com. Yeah. Nice screwdriver. Thanks. Why am I not 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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. 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, 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 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, 00:06:18.720 --> 00:06:23.520 the extruded aluminum looks a little industrial. So we used our laser cutter to make these 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 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 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 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. 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. 00:06:59.600 --> 00:07:04.160 Anywho, with that out of the way, it's time to slide our flexi spot desk. 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? 00:07:16.720 --> 00:07:22.400 Yes, this is the upper desk. Oh, good. Right? Excellent. Yeah. No, yeah, that makes 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 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 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 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. 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? 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... 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. 00:08:14.720 --> 00:08:16.080 Come on, that was smooth. 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. 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 00:08:27.920 --> 00:08:30.240 go right in there like that. Okay, now let's take it all apart. 00:08:32.800 --> 00:08:35.600 Oh, yeah. Yeah, there we go. Keep it coming, keep it coming. 00:08:38.000 --> 00:08:42.000 All right. Hey. Hey. We're back to where we were 20 minutes ago. 00:08:43.840 --> 00:08:47.680 It's time to try them, guys. And we've leveled up, 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. 00:09:01.120 --> 00:09:02.880 So let's put that in there. Okay. 00:09:06.400 --> 00:09:13.200 Ah, you're pretty good. Let's go. This is legitimately gonna look really cool. 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. 00:09:23.040 --> 00:09:25.280 What? How sure are you that these are the right lengths, Justin? 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? 00:09:34.160 --> 00:09:37.680 And the 30-day risk-free trial. Speaking of voided warranties, let's 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? 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? 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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. 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, 00:11:01.360 --> 00:11:07.600 and they were okay with this too. Dude. So our project crap and everything, all this, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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? 00:11:56.800 --> 00:12:01.680 Yeah. We're kind of at redneck engineering here, not actual engineering. Well, how the 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 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 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 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 00:12:23.840 --> 00:12:28.800 and enough liquid cooling. Actually, yeah, this should be able to handle it just fine. 00:12:28.880 --> 00:12:33.760 Triple 120 millimeters. Yeah, it was all running at about 60, 70 degrees. It was fine. 00:12:34.640 --> 00:12:39.120 Awesome. This is legitimately one of the best uses of our screwdriver. Sometimes when you're 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 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 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 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? 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. 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. 00:13:17.440 --> 00:13:21.440 Yeah. Next time you see it, we'll have it pretty. 00:13:24.240 --> 00:13:33.120 Okay. This is pretty sick. Wow. With all the finishing touches, dude, this looks great. 00:13:33.120 --> 00:13:39.040 Turned out pretty good. Oh, brilliant. Low profile keyboard. 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, 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, 00:13:49.680 --> 00:13:53.440 you can just leave them there and then you're flipping good to go. 00:13:56.000 --> 00:14:06.400 Dude, so many aspects of this worked out. No offense. Better than I expected. Like this, 00:14:06.400 --> 00:14:09.600 you guys saw me kind of like, was that going to be stable? Like, 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. 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 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 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 00:14:36.720 --> 00:14:41.440 cable management throughout to keep everything nice and tidy as it's going up and down. 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 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 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 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 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 00:15:14.880 --> 00:15:22.560 desk PCs that we've either built ourselves or bought from independent manufacturers. So flipping 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. 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, 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, 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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? 00:16:38.240 --> 00:16:42.800 Oh dude, she's running great. I think the RGB is a little distracting. 00:16:43.760 --> 00:16:50.480 Yeah. Okay. Realistically, that was more for the video. Okay. We recognize that putting a 00:16:50.480 --> 00:16:56.480 whack ton of RGB behind your monitor, probably not the best for your gaming immersiveness. 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 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 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 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 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 00:17:23.920 --> 00:17:28.800 this video. Great job team. This is great execution. If you guys enjoyed this video, 00:17:28.800 --> 00:17:31.680 maybe go check out the time we originally built a desk PC. Oh my god. 00:17:36.960 --> 00:17:40.320 Oh what? Did you think I was going to keep talking? No, I'm done.