Crump Projects: Walnut Raspberry Pi Enclosure

Continue on with this project:

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, & Part 7 All Done!

This is a bit of a brain game to setup the Router table just right to make these cuts precisely, even, and repeatable. Since I don't want to cut nearly 3/4" deep all at once I will go in stages of about 1/8" at the beginning then 1/16" for the last few passes.

So all my measurements are based from only two points. First is the miter track in front of the router. It is a known straight line that never moves in relationship to the bit, and then also the bit it's self. I start off with the square and measure from the track to both the near far cutting sides of the bit. Then I strike out a line across the width of the table adding an extra line to show the thickness of the RPi's enclosure wall. (Yellow markings on the left side of the picture)

Next I take the near side of the bit's and measure back the width of the enclosure's interior dimension plus the other wall's thickness. I set the fence to that mark (Blue markings in the picture) This lets me cut the long walls to the right side by sliding the piece along the fence.

Now I find the limits to cut the short sides. and I could take the same approach and just move the fence back once I'm done with the long sides but I want to be able to come back and not worry about setup changes. So I mark the width of the bit against the fence it's self. Then make that same kind of measurement from inside wall to opposite outside wall. I do this for both direction so I can use the fence it's self as a corner stop and this allows me to do all 4 walls without moving anything but the depth of the router.

Now where I put those marks I put in two right angle clamp blocks so now I have essentially 3 fences and never need to make another adjustment.

After a bunch of passes I'm left with a decently flat bottom and nice sides. I take a nice sharp chisel to the corners to square them up and we have this...