Woodwork: top plate

After making the pillars I started on the top of the wooden casing. I cut off a piece of the oak measuring 23,2 x 16,9 cm that is going to be the top of the base.

A nice piece of oak

After some carefull measuring I drilled all holes for the pillars as well as for the USB and network cables. After that I bevelled the edges.

First fitting

After that I did a first fitting. The PI’s are not entirely straight here as the pillars are only just pressed in the holes. In the end the pillars will be recessed in the holes for about 1 cm but I did not want to do that now as it is pretty hard to get them out again… And I would like to paint the wooden base before assembly.

So, on to the rest of the base… And to making the difficult choice on the color of the base..

The design

First thing of course was deciding on a design…: would I make a stack of 4 Pi’s, two stacks of two sitting side by side or 4 Pi’s side by side… After some thinking I decided to stick with my original idea of the 2 x 2. The pile of 4 seems a bit unstable and the 4 in a row would take too much space at my desk.

The base of my cluster was going to be made of wood and would have to have enough space to accommodate the hub, switch and all cables.

I also decided to fit a 16×2 3V3 LCD Display somewhere in the cluster to show the IP or something. Just like in the Makezine manual.

With that out of the way I started working on the Pibow casings. More on that in a future post.