A compact and portable tabletop maker space for homes
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Dave from DesignSpark
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Like many DesignSpark community members, I love tinkering away with my Raspberry Pi and Arduino boards at home. In the past, I was lucky enough to have a box room in my Edinburgh flat with a desk and all my kit laid out ready for me to work on my projects whenever I had the chance. But this year, an incredible event took place which changed everything. I became a dad. Among the many changes, we moved flat and I had to say goodbye to my box room/maker space.
After settling into my new role as a dad, I started missing having my own space to work on any ideas that sprung to mind. Without a box room or garage, however, I needed to use the space in our flat as efficiently as possible. I decided to design my own tabletop workbench with power, storage, cable management, etc. with own key characteristic. It had to be able to fit inside a bookshelf when packed away. I chose this feature as we have plenty of IKEA bookshelves at home which only use a small footprint in the flat.
As a mechanical engineer, I designed my little workbench in CAD using 20mm square section slotted aluminium sections. I encased the workbench using laser cut acrylic sheet, which some of would couple with the aluminium frame magnetically. This way I could unpack/pack away quickly and easily. I also designed one of the sheets which detaches from the frame to serve the dual purpose of a work mat so I could protect our dining room table from any damage while I tinker away. To make the pod a functional workbench, I fastened a powerboard internally and installed cable grommets to feed the mains power cable through. It all looked neat and turned out to be a great solution for working on Raspberry Pi projects at home as I could mount a monitor and store all my bits and bobs into it. My partner was especially happy to have a tidy solution to a messy problem at home.
Originally this was just a solution to a problem I personally had at home, but a number of my friends thought it would be useful to others so I have decided to try and launch a business from it. I decided to call it the inventapod® and have protected the design in the UK and Europe with the USA in progress. If you would like to find out more, please check out my website:
Feel free to drop me an email, message me, or contact via our Facebook page if you want to find out any more or have suggestions. It's designed for the makers, creators, and inventors out there so I would love to hear from you!
- Faisal