How to Store and Charge FIFTY LAPTOPS AT ONCE! - Laptop Cart
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
2,014 words · ~10 min read
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i need to oh now this project has been a long
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journey oh hold on i think that's in the way it actually started that sounds
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awful back in february
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2017 which come to think of it like why
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did it take so long for us to get a laptop charging cart so that we can keep
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our laptop batteries from getting damaged well you can't just send me
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emails in the middle of the night and expect me to conjure a laptop card out
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of midair oh
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right speaking of conjuring things out of
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midair thanks to be quiet! for conjuring this
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sponsor spot their white dark bass pro 900 features a
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modular design to support a variety of different layouts and configurations oh
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look at the link in the video description to learn more
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so in all seriousness though what did take so long
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well we had this vision of what we wanted but
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every commercial laptop cart that we could find either held too few laptops
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or it was limited to 17-inch devices
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which clearly wasn't going to cut it for some of the laptops that we need to
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store so i'm sure by now you guys have figured out where i'm going with this
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maybe thanks to the huge proto case shipment that we're uh
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we just well actually we're getting ready to drag it outside for an outdoor
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unboxing but for the kings of overkill
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there was just no reasonable choice other than going with a fully custom
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solution from our bffs over at protocase
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but Linus just build one out of wood Linus come on
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Linus no that's stupid if the note 7 taught us anything it's that batteries
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sometimes not very often but sometimes blow up so uh covering the kindling in a
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gigantic flammable box isn't really the best idea we want to stick with metal so
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after some brainstorming with Jake we refined our original concept and sent a
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package over to the design team at protocase apparently you can literally
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send them cell phone photos of napkin scribbles and they'll turn it into
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something coherent so that makes me feel a little better about the combination of
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technical cad drawings and i show you not
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ms paint concept drawings that we put together
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huge shout out especially to daryl over there for all of his help turning our
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designs into something actually usable
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especially since our original concept would have weighed over
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700 pounds he made tons of great suggestions and dealt with the countless
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revisions and changes that Jake and i made without any complaining at least
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not to us now i'm not gonna lie this project didn't get done in the
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guaranteed two to three day production time of a typical proto case order but
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the design work alone took up 42 man
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hours almost five and a half working days and the fabrication of something
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this complex took a pretty significant chunk of time as well
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46 individual pieces had to be cut with
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an industrial laser say for the right side panel which actually needed the cnc
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router treatment thanks to its 1223
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cutouts the laser is actually so powerful it would just warp the crap out
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of something with that many intricate cuts then the cutters tend to leave some
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sharp edges and little shavings known as burrs so each part got a quick run
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through the deburring machines with large stiff whistles that polish the
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edges down a bit bringing us then to the glue of this build fasteners
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we did end up with a few welded joints but we tried to keep everything as
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deconstructable as possible so in total almost
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260 individual fasteners were manually
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pressed into the sheets of metal these little guys are essentially threaded
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metal that screws can be well screwed into before moving into cosmetics like
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powder coat the pieces were individually cleaned in gigantic bats of degreaser
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then dried in an oven because ain't nobody got time to wait for air drying
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then the real magic happens in the paint station where the powder coating gun is
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charged to 100 000 volts making the
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powder coat nice and electrically sticky
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for the metal pieces well let's uh why don't we you ready huh
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you ready oh i'm ready let's do this thing there we go
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oh my god we gotta coordinate the efforts here
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all right let's do this thing what is that thing you think we're gonna
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take this whole thing apart with that little knife yeah okay i'm gonna get a bigger you know what i'm gonna have it
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done by the time you get back there's no knives so i have scissors
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scissors really these are titanium coated okay man this thing weighs what
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400 pounds yeah 400 and some change 400 change but that's down from 700. see
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it's not about the actual weight it's about the improvement right
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this is incredible here we can see the custom
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full frontal silk screen job designed by ed yago himself this was no easy feat 20
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separate screens were used for the design each requiring a tedious prep
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process involving burning the layouts into the screen and
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cleaning the portions with a pressure washer and then that's all before you
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even think about applying the ink so
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this 400 pound beast got assembled and skid shipped across the continent to our
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office in vancouver and it's time
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for us to charge some freaking laptops
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yeah okay yeah over on this side you can see there's six fans over here giving us
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airflow across the ac to dc uh chargers
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as well as like you know if you have a razor blade for example and it just
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decides to like cook randomly wake up when it's supposed to be sleeping then
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this will keep it from boiling itself so should we grab
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everything out uh yeah we should take this stuff out first okay there's a lip
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on that one man this thing is solid yeah the doors are steel so they're like is
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this fan controller yeah
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yes he was like how do we power it and i was
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like uh nzxt
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oh you're just gonna make me okay well it's not that heavy anymore without
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all the drawers inside oh hold on i'm slipping i'm slipping bubbles kind of a
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big deal oh god did you lock this wheel
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dang it Jake why would you lock the wheel i was happy
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about how it locks okay okay slow down okay there's another cart
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there how's my parking job here
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how are we supposed to actually plug things into this top pdu oh god
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that's a little tricky that's a minor design oversight Jake here just so you
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guys can see what i'm talking about so these are intended to hold the ac
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adapters captive thumbscrews check this out see
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they don't come out and do they have padding on all of them
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yeah that was the idea and they're vented and they're aluminum
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and light we can customize it how we want so let's see if you can do this
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okay that's not very fun but yes it it
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can technically be done
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just a power adapter it's fine
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oh wait well here do you want to pop the top and then oh
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raindrop drop top i got this it'll be fine okay maybe i don't
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custom brandon god so i mean i realize this is a supremely
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first world problem but like we have a lot of laptops
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and right now they're all just sitting on
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the shelf essentially rotting because i
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don't know if you know this but it discharges over time and then it can
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actually go bad if it sits there discharged for too long remember kids if
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you got too much discharge it's always a bad thing that would have been not that
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bad until you practiced it with remember kids ouch oh what the hell is this thing
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oh my god don't ask questions does this have like an express card
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why are we even bothering to keep this thing alive i hate
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these stock cable ties they're trash
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they're just garbage uh so
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this is the water cooled laptop the laptop can go in the cart and then
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we'll just put the water cooler like next to it okay no
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okay yeah okay just just give it to me
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devices like this we should really charge and stuff what is that
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they're cool yeah when are you ever gonna use this well never which is
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exactly why we need to be charging it so it doesn't die
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it's basically just a smartphone with a fat keyboard yeah yeah
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wow that is something
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honestly like half of the laptops on the bottom i've only got what is this five
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six seven eight laptops down here i've got like
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12 power bricks i can barely even put
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like so it takes up like this much space up
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here proto case we're gonna need a rev too
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rev2 i actually don't know how many laptops
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we have so i'm about to find out one two
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flirty laptops plus blancho laptops plus people who have laptops deployed to them
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i have two all the writers have one each
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we probably have like 40 to 50 laptops why
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well whatever the reason for it is we
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finally have a safe place to store them um everything from the thinning lights
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on the top to the sort of like gaming models in the middle um slash you know
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powerful models like the mac pros here macbook pro rather to the completely
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over the top ridiculous ones huge shout out to protocase
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for sending this over to us if you can imagine it protocase can
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pretty much build it how heavy is this thing now
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like this is a this is a hard rubber tire
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we flattened it um
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well ting is the mobile carrier that's focused on customer satisfaction when
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you call them you speak to a real person not an automated phone tree and you only
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pay for what you use with the average ting bill under 25 dollars per month per
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device you don't have to kind of guess if it'll work for you though you can go
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over to Linus.ting.com we'll have that linked below and use their savings
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calculator enter your last few bills and how much you paid for them and it'll
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spit out whether you'd save money on ting then when you decide to switch to
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ting all you gotta do is go to that link and you can get 25 bucks towards a
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service credit what's cool is that on top of that if you need to get out of
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your contract to switch to ting ting will cover 25 of your cancellation fee
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up to 75 dollars so again head over to
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Linus.ting.com and check them out so thanks for watching guys if you like
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this video you can hit like button if you disliked it you can hit that button too but otherwise get subscribed check
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out our merch store check out protocase these guys are flipping awesome we love
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working with them uh especially because they send us such cool stuff
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um what else are they talking about we have a merch store we'll have that
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linked in the video description also our community forum
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now it's locked now people cannot get any laptops ever
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again if we lose this key so let's try not to do that