Feat: A4 Paper Tray from 5mm Plywood

[nelsonic]

Problem: we have lots of paper around the office that needs to be sorted, organised and processed. We don't have enough trays for temporarily storing it all ... We could buy those trays from IKEA, Staples, etc. but where's the fun in that? 😜 If we make our and learn from the process, we could: a. make something cheaper than the mass-produced stuff b. make a better design that meets our specific needs c. make dozens or even hundreds of them for ourselves and others

Todo

• [x] Create a prototype A4 Paper In-tray design
  • [x] Should fit a flat A4 sheet of paper with 5mm spare on all sides
  • [x] Should use 5mm birch plywood (which we know works well on our Laser cutter)
  • [x] Should have interlocking joints for easy assembly
• [x] Laser Cut the V1 prototype
• [x] Assemble (glue) the prototype
• [x] UX-test it!

[nelsonic]

Prototype V1 created. Going to cut it now! ⚡ ⏳

[nelsonic]

The stray (non-functional) lines were bugging me too ... so I fixed them! 😥

[nelsonic]

Attempted to laser cut the V1 prototype:

but the cut speed 30mm/s @ 80% was too fast so it failed. 🤦‍♂️ running it again at 9mm/s @ 80% ⏳🤞🏼

[nelsonic]

Second time worked a charm:

Going to glue it up now to UX test it tomorrow morning ⏳🤞🏼

[nelsonic]

Assembled and glue-up:

Should be ready to test tomorrow morning when I wake up. ⏳

[nelsonic]

While waiting for the tray (glue) to dry, I felt that the depth of the tray is too much so I modified the design from 85mm to 65mm; uses fewer materials and achieves the same result:

Note: I actually think we could go even thinner if we were to "productionise" these. e.g: 45mm 💭

[nelsonic]

V2 assembled and glueing:

[nelsonic]

Tested V2 (65mm) with a stack of paper and it's too deep; 🤔 like it would encourage accumulating too much paper before processing ... 💭

So I reduced it to 45mm and tiled the V3 so it will cut 3 at once. 3️⃣

going to run the laser now. ⚡

[nelsonic]

Gluing the first V3 tray:

have limited G-Clamps (Quick-Grip) so can’t glue them all at once… my treat myself to a few more on #BrackFridayBunduru this year. 💭

Meanwhile the two I made yesterday, v1 & v2, turned out well and will be put to good use:

Quite happy with this result. Don’t think there’s anything to improve, yet. We can revise/improve when we got feedback from @iteles once the whole thing is assembled. 🤞🏼⏳

[nelsonic]

The trays installed in the Organiser: dwyl/home#218 🎉

Now we "just" need to add labels to the trays to make the GTD System useful ... ⏳

[nelsonic]

@iteles I was just busy preparing to make labels for the in-tray system: 📥

It occurred to me to consult with you who are the primary "stakeholder" of this ... 💭 Do you prefer to have a single in-tray for receipts for the whole year, or have 4 trays; one for each quarter?

When you reply we can move forward with cutting and gluing these fast. 👌

[iteles]

@nelsonic Carlos has just asked us to move to a monthly system, where we hand him the invoices at the end of every month because apparently it's a LOT more work for him to do 3 months at once because of how his and the government systems are set up.

So in actual fact, the most useful labelling would be:

• Faturas Current Month
• Faturas Previous Month
• Faturas To archive
• Shoshin Outstanding actions (if a fourth is to be had, not necessarily for faturas)

Good thing I missed this notification 4 days ago or we'd have printed something that would already be obsolete 😅