problem

I rent a lot of videos at home but my typical behavior with rented videos is to just throw them on any horizontal surface and then forget when they are due back at blockbuster. As a result, I'm never sure when I'm going to be hit with a large late fine.

solution

To solve this problem I played with a bunch of ideas and eventually settled on a small rack with movable dividers which had the day of the week on them. I prototyped the rack and made a number of tweaks and refinements to the shapes of things before I began building.

construction

To make the rack, I was initially going to use a CNC mill since I had to make seven identical dividers which also all had a curved edge to them. However, twelve hours in the shop with precious little to show for my efforts (though with more than enough experience making small tweaks and changes to my CAD file as a result of my trouble shooting) I decided that CNC was not going to work. I became very good friends with the belt sander after that and with a lot of doublestick tape, I was able to make seven identical dividers, complete with curve, in under two hours.

I did get to use a manual mill to make the feet and divider ends though. The feet were an especially tricky fixture which ended up requiring a couple v-blocks and a soft jaw in the vice.

finishing

To do the finishing, I first brushed the aluminum and then masked off the dividers and sandblasted in the lettering. The whole thing was then clear anodized and assembled, resulting in a finished rack.