herring_fish
Crazy Designer

I was inspired by this installation and decided to go with a similar design. I liked the combination of the clean look of stainless and the wire housing that keeps everything organized. I noted the light from above that is shining through the slots in the housing that's on top and thought that LED's inside the channels could either look cool or a bit corny.
I started to do the layout on CAD and thought that, not only couldn't I decide on how it should be set up but that I will surely buy new equipment in the future and want a totally different layout all together. I didn't want to have old drill holes left over from the previous layouts.

That is when I decided to buy a thin sheet of brushed stainless steel and another sheet of regular steel. I decided to glue them together, attach them both to a plywood board and put that on the wall. That way I could mount some of the equipment via magnets like an old style refrigerator. As I scanned through the equipment that I might want to add to the board, I knew that some of it might be too heavy to be mounted that way. I thought that I wanted to mount 2 industrial peristaltic pumps that would be "œify" and finally, I thought that I would add my RO/ID unit which would definitely not be able to be held via magnets.
For the RO/DI unit, I used 2" by ¼" flat aluminum bar stock that is attach with "œL" brackets and screwed into the sides of the plywood. For the industrial peri pumps, I used the bar stock but also used magnets at the top of the box to keep it from rotating down and away from the board.

For the Controller and EB8, I added the magnets to the mounting brackets. I was afraid that the magnetism would damage the electronics inside but SO FAR they SEEM to work OK. I used a Dremel tool to remove the ribs where I wanted to add the magnets. Then I attached them using 5 minute epoxy. If the fit is not just right, there isn't enough time to seat the magnets right. I had to remove a set and re-do them.
For the tablet, I will probably add a block of wood held to the boards with magnets and attach the computer to the block with Velcro.

I haven't gotten around to adding the wire housing and it may take a while before I get to it being that I have so much yet to do. I'll let the design settle down a little and then hopefully clean it all up.