Transcript:
In this video, I’m going to show you how I created my dream Youtube workstation by transforming my desk from this to this using 3d printing technology. Let’s get started. [MUSIC] So how’s it going guys, Angus? Here from maker’s Muse. Now I’ve been doing Youtube for quite a few years now and I’ve had many desk setups, but recently I thought I’d take the time to strip everything back with everything I’ve learned and build my ultimate Youtube workstation because I spent so much time here doing 3d modeling and video editing and I even produce music for the channel. I want it to be as perfect as possible, but it really wasn’t, and I had a lot of things I needed to fix so this video is going to be quite long with a few parts that I’m going to cover. I upgraded the audio. Then we’re going to tackle video. Then we’re going to tackle how I get media into the computer so like the ingest station or whatever the term is and then finally the aesthetics, because well, it’s somewhere I’m going to be working for hours on end, so I want it to look awesome and I am super into synthwave aesthetic, So that’s the direction I went with here now. As mentioned, I use 3d design and 3d modeling heavily to make this project possible, but the hardware isn’t 3d printed. We’re not quite at that point yet and look. I am lucky enough to have some really good hardware these days. It wasn’t always like this, but it’s kind of also where a few of the issues snuck in and it’s mostly this monitor. So this is a super ultra wide 32×9 Uh, monitor. It’s like two 1080p screens welded together by Samsung. It’s a behemoth of a monitor, but because I do a lot of timeline work like, in premiere pro the timeline editing or in Cubase for the music editing, It’s really incredible to use for that sort of thing, but it’s huge. So the first issue I had to fix was the speakers, so I have studio monitors on each side, but because this monitor was so huge, they were stuck behind. It and I don’t need to tell you that that’s not great for audio quality. Now I could get a bigger desk. Yes, but there’s a few issues with that. Firstly, it’s quite difficult to buy desks right now and second. I don’t really want a larger desk because if I go this direction or further in the depth, it’s going to start really encroaching on this studio space. It’s not very big, actually, so I wanted to find a different solution. I came up with the idea of having wings to support these speakers now. Each one is about 10 kilos or something. They’re quite heavy studio monitors, so they had to be strong, so I fired up fusion 360. And went about designing these wings to hold these speakers in such a way that they would be angled towards me in the correct orientation that I would get the optimum listening and audio monitoring experience just so it turns out they are quite big, so they had to be made from something fairly durable. What about steel? So I do have a friend Who has a plasma cutter now. This is a CNC machine like a 2d plotter with a plasma cutter on the end, which actually can cut through metal using ionized gas. It’s it’s incredible it uses. He sucked like hotter than the surface of the sun. I think something ridiculous like that anyway. Six millimeter, thick steel, no issue for a plasma cutter to cut. And my friend was kind enough to do these for free out of scrap steel. Now it just so happens that plasma cutting is quite a cheap way to cut steel, but it leaves a lot of slag on the edges. It’s quite rough, so the first thing to do is to clean these pieces up with a grinder and then degrease them and prime and paint them, and I chose a nice sort of gray to match in with the rest of the aesthetic of the desk. I was going for now. Obviously, these speakers are quite big and they’re overhung quite a fair amount, so mounting them to desk also similarly needs to be quite overkill, and originally I was going to use six m6 tapped threads, but I couldn’t really be bothered tapping six millimeter thick steel twelve times, so I found these really cool m12 bolts at Bunnings. They’re massive, but they’re actually not too long, and they have a really nice big head on them, so I don’t need washers, and I thought I’d just use four on each side. This means I had to drill out that six millimeter thick steel to 12 millimeters, but nothing ever goes completely, according to plan. And unfortunately, I completely missed the bracket under the table where the legs attached to the table top. So when I was trying to put the steel wings in place, they would intersect, so I had to crack out the grinder and the drill press and punch out some little bites out of them to make sure they would clear that bracket, but thankfully, no one ever is ever going to see that horrible mistake. I made because it’s nicely hidden under the desk with the speaker wings in place. It was now time to take care of the audio interface. I use a ur 22 from Steinberg. I’ve had it for years. It’s bulletproof, durable, highly recommended, but it’s very big and takes up a lot of desk space, but it doesn’t really need to what if we mount it under the desk and that’s where 3d printing and 3d modeling comes in handy. I found out fusion 360. And designed this kind of overkill mount to mount the er22 under the desk to it, so I could just attach my microphone and such and then have the audio out. Go to the two active monitors. Now I did probably spend way too much time. Making this look fancy with ribs and such, but it’s kind of pointless because 3d printing has infill and will be strong anyway. You don’t need to do this sort of thing, but sometimes it’s fun to design stuff over the top. Even if no one’s ever going to see it with the UI 22 mounted under the desk. Accessing the knobs is kind of difficult, but really, once you set volume, it’s not too much of an issue and it does clear up a heck of a lot of space. It means I can now use my Midi fighter 3d and put that in place and something you might not know is you can use software to actually map Midi controller inputs to macros and hotkeys and that sort of thing, so I can actually use this in my video editing software as well, which is doubly handy finally with the audio stuff. I had to fix the microphone now. Originally, I didn’t have a shock. Mount, which meant when I touched the desk. It would be like that it would ring through the microphone and it would be really annoying, especially during streams. I’d bounce the desk by accident and it would be like rip headphone users. So I did look at making it my own shock mount, but it’s quite complicated and difficult. You need the right sort of rubberized components, So I just found this one online and bought it. It’s got a really cool pop filter as well, which I’m not using right now because it’s quite large, but it actually is created using metal etching to make tiny little perforations. Pretty neat, nice process and it works awesome. So now I have a shock mount for my microphone. A boom arm. I can push to the side. My audio interface is mounted under the desk, and my speakers sound great and then mounted on the side out of the way from the rest of the components. Now it’s time to move on to video, so I use this setup to do streaming and also my video tutorials using fusion 360. Or slicing programs. That sort of thing to help you guys with your 3d printing projects, But for years I’ve only really done it with a webcam, A c920 webcam and look, it works. Okay, but it’s not the best quality, and I really do strive for high quality video on this channel. So recently I bought a second Panasonic g7 Which is the camera? I’m using to record this right now, and I actually put a tripod behind the monitor and the camera on it and connected it to the computer, using an HDMI interface called a Cam Link and that works really well, but it was incredibly janky. So how do we mount a camera to this setup cleanly well? The monitor is so gigantic has so much mass and rigidity. I wanted to figure out a way to mount a camera to the monitor, so I designed up this in fusion 360. And this is a ball joint with a quick swap plate that attaches to the camera and it simply sits on the edge of the monitor. Wherever I want now, this is a curved monitor with a lot of weird angles to it. So how do you reverse engineer those dimensions to make something like this? Well, to be honest. I eyeballed an awful lot of it. Then I printed three angles where I thought were kind of close and I picked the one that was the best and then used it to make the final part. So I always recommend that. If you can do a test that doesn’t take very long do a few tests and then do your final versus me doing this straight away, which takes a lot of filament takes a lot of time to print and it probably wouldn’t have been correct, so doing those tests really did save me time and filament so now I can easily record my tutorials and my streams. I can have 1080p with a proper like proper micro four thirds lens and everything fantastic really stoked with this, and I’m definitely gonna be using it heaps in future. All right, next is media. So this is getting SD cards, getting them from the camera, putting them into the footage into the computer and then editing and then storing those SD cards and USB sticks for future use. Now previously, I actually adapted this design from Thingiverse, which holds USB sticks and SD cards, but I actually uncovered a catastrophic floor that non non-saw coming. You see when I was mounted to the edge of the desk. If something heavy would fall on the desk, they would actually catapult across the room like no joke. I actually lost several SD cards when this would happen and I think someone in like the bin, so I had to remedy that pretty badly, and I wanted a place to store other things like, like a pen, which I’m always losing pens Nearby and SD cards and the SD card reader and USB sticks. Things like that, so I did consider many ways to improve the method where they sort of slot into a hole and maybe the hole has a bit of friction or something, but in the end. I just wanted to draw and that’s what I ended up designing. So this is a tiny little drawer. It’s completely 3d printed now. This is designed completely to my specifications and is designed to hold primarily storage media, so SD cards and USB sticks, the SD card side. I’m particularly happy with they actually sit upright in a little slot and the micro SD cards have a little ramp. They can be pulled out of because a slot from microsd. Its they’re too tiny, really now on the other side, there’s room for pens, USB sticks and whatever else I want to shove in there. Getting a sliding mech to work without using any support material for 3d printing was actually quite a challenge. Um, but I did get it in the end. It actually uses a little catch to stop it pulling out too far. That’s screwed into the side, and the whole thing is screwed into the desk and everything I’ve printed in this video. If you want to check it out, it’s going to be linked in the video description. This is probably the most useful thing, but the rest will be there too, so I’m really happy with the way the media is stored now. But what about getting it into the computer? Well, I actually did buy an SD card reader, and I was hoping to mount that under the desk so I could just take the SD cards and slot them in, but whoever designed this, I’d like a word because the plug that you use to connect it to computer is on the same side as the SD slot that means if I mounted it to the edge of the desk that would just be sticking out and I’m definitely going to bump into it and rip it in half, so this is what I ended up going with. Instead, It’s an old USB 3 hub I’ve had for quite a while, but I want to mount it under the desk, and the original plastic case is obviously not suitable. Well, let’s design a new case for it. It honestly didn’t take very long at all to 3d model up using some dimensions. The first version was a little bit tight, but the second one works completely fine. It mounts under the desk using some small screws. Luckily, the PCB inside has four holes where the screws can go through, and then the case is completely enclosed. It works great. So what I’ve got is just a standard USB 3 SD card reader, and it just goes in like that, and now I can take the media off the SD card. Take it off and put it back in storage all right now! Let’s talk about the fun stuff aesthetics. Now before the desk looked like crap it. Just I hate the fake wood grain. Look, it was wearing out. I just wanted to make it look a bit nicer and to do that. I’ve changed quite a few things now. The biggest obvious visual change is the surface necessarily used to have an old workstation. Its automotive carpet and it costs very little. It’s fantastic for a desk setup. Let me tell you why, because a it feels Nice B, it’s dark and you know, it looks looks nice and professional C. It absorbs dust, so it keeps dust down, but then you can just vacuum it, and finally, the best part about it Is it absorbs liquid, so if you have a spill and you know our disaster, it wicks it up, which is fantastic, and, you know, worst case you just replace it because it’s really cheap. Some of you might have seen the mechanical keyboard restoration video. I did not too long ago and you’ll notice that this is not that keyboard, but don’t worry. That keyboard has found a loving new home with Lady Muse. This is an expensive mechanical keyboard. It’s just a magic force from China and it’s got, like, uh, clone Cherry mx reds. They’re not quite as nice as, uh, the other keyboard, but it’s much more compact and it has that really nice purple and white aesthetic, But I I do also like my wanky Leds, and I’ve seen online people implementing this ambi light sort of thing where there’s led strips behind the monitor or TV and they’re like responsive. So if the screens blue in one corner, the Leds behind will be blue and project onto the wall behind it sort of mad more immersiveness to this setup, and I’ve always wanted to try it, so I finally got around to trying using this fantastic tutorial video, which again everything’s linked below, and it’s really simple. You just need some addressable Leds, which I found from core electronics here in Australia. They arrived really quickly. Despite everything going on and just an Arduino nano, which uses one data pin and I designed this tiny little case for it, so it keeps everything compact. You do need to give the Leds quite a bit of current. These are 5 Volt strips, so I just have a 5 volt 4 AMP power supply for the amount I have, which is just along the top, so it’s 73 Leds in total. I’m not sure if 4 amps is enough, but it doesn’t seem to get all that hot, and I was up and running so quickly and it really does make a difference when you have a video running on the screen, it does really add to the immersiveness. It really does make it pop, which is really cool so out of everything I’ve done on this project. Even though Leds are completely just for aesthetic, I can highly recommend giving this a go because the software runs really smoothly. It’s called prismatic and you can easily set it up. It doesn’t take much effort and it does make a really big difference to the aesthetic in the room, providing you like that, RGB everything aesthetic because I certainly do, and the final thing to change was the mouse pad so because the monitor is so huge, the legs actually didn’t even let the mouse pad sit like square with the desk because they’re just so big, so I just cut a little bit off the corner, and now everything sits so good, and it’s so minimal, but so functional. I’ve been using this for a few weeks now after setting it up, it did take me about a month or month and a half to do a little bits now and then, but I’m super stoked with this, and I know some of the hardware I have is quite expensive. The upgrades. I did to make it from what it was. Before to this really won’t. I just use bog standard black PLA for all of my upgrade parts. Uh, you could easily print it on an end of three. Nothing here is too specialized or fancy. Granted, you would need access to some sort of metal cutting to do like the speaker wings because they’re so heavy, and even the desk is sagging a little bit, but everything else you could easily do on a low end 3d printer, which I think is so cool because I just, it’s my aim on this channel to empower your creativity through technology and sometimes that it mean includes empowering my own creativity through technology so I can continue to bring you content and that’s what this project’s really been all about, So let me know in the comments. If you have any questions or suggestions, I’d love to hear them and again. Everything I’ve done and used in this video is linked in the description below. So thanks for watching guys. Look for seeing you again Very shortly here on maker’s Muse. Catch you later, bye.