Making some systainer port type cabinets

eruzich

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Joined
May 15, 2007
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I currently have all my power tools sitting on pallet racking with a lot of wasted space. All my air and power tools get mixed and are always tangled on top of each other. So after so deliberating I decided to make five cabinets that are systainer port like.
Here is the first one I put together to test the functionality of the design. Cabinets are made with 3/4 finished plywood and outside dims came out to 39 3/8 tall x 19 1/2 wd and 23 3/4 deep. Here are some pics of the first cabinet. I was little concerned about the deep but I have 20 extra 22" drawer slides and wanted to use them. The extra deep seems great for accessories. When finished I will take some before and after photos.
 
I like the idea of the use of the extra deep drawers.  I have one table that the back space has my vac in it, but for the the new table I'm building for the MFT/3, I don't want to have to pull away from the wall in my shop whenever I need to get anything from far side. 
 
I wanted to originally mimic the dims of the systainer port, I like that they do not take up much space and I thought if I bought one the would match nicely.
However I have a couple hundred dollars worth of slides and rather use them up, also the extra space for accessories should work well. Some tools are just better out of a systainer (like the router). Cost to build my own vs the Festool version should save me over $2,000, still might by one for home use though.
 
Very nice, I like the extra depth not only for accessories but also to create a deeper work surface.

Are the backs 3/4" plywood or something thinner?
 
The depth is perfect for a work surface even though I plan I putting a counter-top on the cabinets. I used 3/4 ply on the entire cabinet because it was easy to cut all the parts on the cnc with 1 sheet. I also used 5mm holes with a 32mm spacing centered from top to bottom so the cabinet is the same upside down.
I had a left over pullout which I built the tall cabinet for and it just happens to fit systainers perfectly. I'm still working on drawers and one more cabinet but I am already much more organized then with the racking I was using previously. The racking has now been moved to the front of my shop for shipping and hardware storage. Thanks for looking and any suggestions are more then welcome.
 
I realized Monday that having 2 stacks of systainers, the one I want is always under the top one. I think I am going to have to build a couple SYS cabs now. Would be so much easier to slide out a drawer than unstack and re stack.
 
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