CNC Laptop Cart

I needed a cart for the laptop that controls the CNC machine. I decided it would be a good test project to use the CNC to cut out the parts for the cart.

I started by watching a video from Jay’s Custom Creations about how he made his laptop cart. I started designing my cart from scratch in SketchUp using what I learned from watching the video. I decided to use 3/4″ and 1/2″ SandePly from Home Depot. The 1/2″ plywood was used for the drawer boxes. Everything else was made from 3/4″ material.

With my design complete, I began importing the vectors for the parts into VCarve Pro. I added fillets to all internal corners of the mortises and tenons and laid the parts out to be cut out of leftover pieces and full sheets of SandePly.

After all parts were cut out on the CNC, it was time to move to the router table where I used a flush trim bit to remove the remnants of the tabs left by the CNC. Next, it was time to sand. This was quick as SandePly is fairly smooth and sands to a nice finish very quickly. I rounded over some sharp edges that would be hard to do after assembly.

Now it was time to put it all together. I first assembled all of the drawer boxes followed by the cart itself. On the cart, I worked from the inside out with the last piece being the back. To put the back on, 50 tenons had to fit into mortises. I was worried about this, but the back went on without much effort owing to the precision of the CNC machining.

I had intended to not use any fasteners however, there were several places where it was impossible to use clamps to pull joints fully closed. The finished cart is extremely sturdy while not being all that heavy.

I rounded over all sharp edges with a trim router and sanded the exposed plywood edges. I also sanded the sides and back. I applied super blonde shellac to all parts using an LVLP spray gun. After everything was dry, I installed four nice double-locking swivel casters from Woodcraft. Lastly, I attached a surge protector into the bottom cavity and hooked it all up. All in all, it is a great addition to the shop

Later, I made the two additions to the left side of the cart shown in the photo. The upper mount stores the collet wrenches, dust boot, and spring clamps that I use for the dust boot. The lower mount is a cord wrap for storing the surge protector cord.