Tool Mat Suit for Soldering

The project is made for the fabrication lab in NYU Shanghai. The aim of it is to keep the soldering table tidy and in order. The mat consists of grooves to keep tools and equipment in place, two helping hands to fix the item to solder, a shelf to use tapes and soldering wires, and a customized timing adaptor for safety and ensuring that the equipment is turned off when not used.

Plywood 9 mm - size greater than 550mm x 550mm

MDF 5 mm - size greater than 600mm x 370mm

Plywood 5mm

Wood glue

Equipment: Laser-cutter, CNC, 3D printer.

Use the CNC machine to carve a 9mm plywood board and make grooves and holes to place tools and equipment. The file for the plan of the base is attached below. Notice: we carved the pockets for the tools on the left side by 6mm.

Feel free to edit the file to adapt to your own tools.

Use the laser cutter to cut the mat for the workplace. Here we chose 5mm MDF. The file for cutting is attached below. Use wood glue to glue the mat to the base. (We made the base in 2 parts, and the mat is used for connecting the two parts together)

Drill two holes on the plywood board that are slightly smaller than your helping hands. The ones we used have a 10 mm thread, thus we made a 9.5 mm hole. Plywood is strong enough to thread directly into it and have a sturdy connection.

Use the laser cutter to cut 5mm plywood in the shapes provided in the 1st file. We double them up to add some strength to it. Assemble the plywood according to the photo. The diameter of the wood stick in the middle is 20mm.

Here the frame is designed for a specific type of adaptor and the specific types of wires. The link to buy these objects are below, but viewers outside China might be difficult to buy these products. Other types may not suit the frame, but some adjustments could be applied to the files to make them fit accordingly. Use the laser cutter to cut 5mm plywood in the shapes provided in the file. The frame is divided into 2 parts: the front and the back. They should be made separately combined from the plywood with a glue gun. It could only be fixed when the wires are plugged in, and the structure is held in position tightly just with the wires and the adaptor themselves, no need to glue the two parts together.

link for timing adaptor: https://detail.tmall.com/item.htmid=570424030937&spm=a1z09.2.0.0.51452e8dnKJlAb&_u=o33rculq43e2

link for wire: https://detail.tmall.com/item.htm?id=19862331920&spm=a1z09.2.0.0.51452e8dnKJlAb&_u=o33rculqc236