Espresso Station

This is a little cubby drawer station I made to go with my Breville Barista Express machine. It is meant to store drink mixes, tea, espresso supplies, sugar, cups.

The Tools

• 60 watt CO2 laser
• rubber bands
• Fusion360
• Lightburn

The Materials

• 5mm birch plywood
• wood glue
• sandpaper

The Build

The empty space will have a drawer that slides in and out for main storage of tea bags, supplies, etc.

I designed the drawer with a 2mm tolerance on all sides and found out that was way too much. I should have done 1mm or less. I put the hole handes on both sides to allow for air to escape because I assumed it would be a tight fit.

This is my first project with birch plywood. I did NOT know that the middle layers of the plywood were not 100% filled. Surprisingly, this 5mm birch cut much easier than 6.3mm MDF.

Putting together the pieces was messy. I used steel wool to brush off the ash from the laser cuts, but it still got everywhere.

I tried to sand off the dirty ash, but found out that a damp cloth worked even better to clean up all the dirty ash from the surface.

I engraved a little coffee logo on the front just for fun. In retrospect, the design is much too long, I could have made it a little more compact.

Mistakes

• top-front piece was designed with no interlocking joint and relies entirely on glue
• the 2mm gap tolerance for the drawer is way too much
• tried to sand off ash instead of wiping it down
• design too long, need to shorten it
• found out i added tolerance to BOTH pieces, doubling up on the gap
• need to engrage the logo a bit darker next time
• need to round off the fillet on the handles more to match the drawer handle

Updates

Redid the design to make it shorter, also fixed the front top piece so that it interlocks properly. I also burned the espresso logo in the front darker and rounded off the fillets.