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 in 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
Flexis Spot was like, "Dude, what if you just had a second desktop?" The hobbyist
in me was like, "Heck yeah, look how
awesome this is. What if you could use a sitstand 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 hey, >> crazy is his middle name. Let's see how he built it." Well, my middle I thought
that the line was it's your middle name. My middle name is 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. >> We chose the E7 Plus with this dark
bamboo top. It's surprisingly affordable for a premium for post desk. It adjusts
all the way from Lucas height down to Linus height and has a static load limit
of 540 lb. >> 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 you 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 filly little details. Once our design is roughed out, we can
spend some quality time on the chopsaw.
We're also going to need 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 cuddle 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 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,
they 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 Flexis Spot 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 used three layers of
bamboo throughout. So, we took these and got back to work while Flexispot tweaked
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 going to 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 these 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
the self-aligning rollin T-nuts. Uh 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 cuz you're going to need that time to get everything lined up and perfectly square.
>> Nice cargo pants. >> Thank you. >> ltstore.com.
>> Yeah, nice screwdriver. >> Thanks. Why am I not able to do this?
Is it still fighting you? >> Yeah, >> we saved you some money on the brackets
that we made those. >> Does that really save us money?
>> Did huge >> about 60 or 70 of them in about 4 hours.
As we struggle through this, I'm reminded of a 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 cuz this is Yep. 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
Okay. And hey,
>> 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 does 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 poke it down in.
Anywh who, with that out of the way, it's time to slide our Flexis Spot desk
ah into place.
Okay. Um Jordan. >> Yep.
>> 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 right. Yep.
>> Nobody panic. >> We learned. Yeah, I learned my lesson
this time. >> 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 Who the
hell put >> me? I did this.
>> What the heck, dude? >> Justin was upset with this thing, so it got a little
>> Did I just strip it? >> Ass. You're the one who put it in like
this. >> That's not the right hole.
>> What? Ah,
the wrong pieces there.
At least that's what it appears to be. Those front two just got to go. Cuz we
used the one side as reference. It looks like we built the same side twice. How
come it never goes smooth?
>> Hey, before we take it all apart though, we could have a quick look at how low it
goes. That's like a 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
All right. >> Hey. >> Hey. >> We're back to where we were 20 minutes
ago. >> It's times a charm, guys.
>> And we've leveled up.
But cuz it's level now. >> Okay. Tempers are running hot as the LTT
team attempts to build a desk.
>> So, let's put that in there. >> Okay. Um,
>> you did pretty good. >> Let's go.
This is legitimately going to look really cool. I wasn't sure until now.
>> This is the moment. >> Is this screw supposed to Oh, yeah. There. Oh, no. Uh. Um,
>> 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 uh 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 needed 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 the pull out
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. >> See, it's totally stable. >> Yeah. I'm kind of surprised to be honest
with you. >> We talked to the engineers 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
cuz that's where our monitor is going to be. Ah,
>> is there a reason we used a Kui monitor?
>> It fit. >> Okay, let's put on the shelves. >> Yeah.
>> Okay. So, this goes in here. >> Yeah.
>> And uh 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.
>> Well, at least two of the pilot holes line up. >> Okay. >> Is that enough pilot holes?
>> Uh, 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.
Adds 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 GSkill DDR56000.
We've got a 4090 and enough liquid
cooling actually. Yeah, this should be able to handle it just fine. Triple 120
mm. >> Yeah, it was all running at about 60 70°
and 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
selftapper, 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. Okay, >> 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. >> What's going on? All right. So, here I
am at my project desk. Dude, this is so
sick. Little bit of cable management here.
>> Some, you know, nice accessories and stuff around it. Yeah. >> 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. Lowprofile keyboard.
>> Well, you got to watch out cuz there's the bars here. >> Yeah. Well, okay. Yeah, you 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, is 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 but only until only until it comes down. Now, like many
standing desks, Flexis 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 I thought we'd give up so much of our
space to, you know, 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. >> 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 I really like this
because it's a place for me to maybe if I had a higher profile mouse or 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. >> Speaking of awesome, check out Flex Spot's Labor Day sale and save an extra
10% off orders of $500 or more with the code in the description. How 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.
Uh, thanks to Flexispot for sponsoring this video. Uh, great job team. This is
great execution. Uh, 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.