Repurposed Rousseau Parts Cabinets

I purchased these Rousseau Parts Cabinets on an Auction a few years back for $901.00. I finally got around to redesigning the Cabinets to make them a little more stout. The original cabinet structure was flimsy when we separated the modules.

I reverse engineered all the components and loaded them in a model and design the new Cabinet around the components.

I used 14 Ga Galvanneal material to eliminate the need for paint (or the option of painting later). The "Feet" are made from 14 Ga 304-2B Stainless.

All the Galvanneal material was punched on a Strippit Turret Press even coining in all the Countersinks for the flathead Rivets. The Stainless Items were cut on an Amada 1212 Pulsar Laser.

All the parts were formed on a 9 Axis Amada HFE Press Brake. Fortunately for me my brother and I own a Precision Sheet Metal Fab Shop. I have been designin and fabricating for 36 years. I got into sheet metal because I have so many home projects that require it...LOL...

Started with this:



Ended up with this (I have 3 more assemblies to complete today):



Used Rivet Construction









Drawer installation





On to the next project...29 Cabinets for my Gun Vault.

Very nice. Having access to the right equipment makes life so much easier.

Wow, those are awesome!!! Dimensions? Do you know what the load capacity is on the drawer slides? I ran into that once before where I tore apart a shelving kit just for the drawer sections to find out that the drawers themselves needed the surrounding structure for support.

Any particular reason you went with rivets over spot welds? Fully loaded, especially if not level, you may come into shear rivet or wallow issues over time.

zkling said:

Wow, those are awesome!!! Dimensions? Do you know what the load capacity is on the drawer slides? I ran into that once before where I tore apart a shelving kit just for the drawer sections to find out that the drawers themselves needed the surrounding structure for support.

Any particular reason you went with rivets over spot welds? Fully loaded, especially if not level, you may come into shear rivet or wallow issues over time.

Click to expand...

According to their website 400 lbs.

http://www.rousseaumetal.com/en/products/SpiderShelvingWithDrawers/

Dimensions are 47 1/2 high x 23 5/8 deep x 39 1/4 high overall.

As far as Riveting goes well there are many reasons...

Over the years about 75-80% of what we build is now riveted verses welded. Pre-plate materials are a driver. Spotwelding and welding pre-plate is bad for your health (toxic gases) and the welds are not as strong as the pre-plate contaminates the welds during the process. Why pre-plate? Reduces cost of post plate/finishing operations and takes one more step out of the process reducing lead-time.

Not to mention OSHA and the department of health are stepping up their campaigns on welding health and safety.

But the bigger issue is finding qualified welders. Since society has brainwashed kids that they need a college education and tech degrees are beneath them there is a shortage of welders driving compensation through the roof. Simply put, we can take any unemployed Bachelor of Arts/MBA/Masters grad and put them to work riveting with very little training...assuming they need to move out of Mom and Pops basement and actually work for a living.

Strength always comes up. Riveting has been around longer than welding. Bridges, buildings and Airplanes are riveted. Design is critical in rivet construction. Creating multiple shear planes is key to strength.

The design for this particular build puts the load on the sheet metal side panels verses the rivets. There are slots on the back side of the Panels and squares on the front. The Slide mounts are "tapped" into those slots and square and the load is vertical and all but 1/4" off the floor. Assuming the 22 rivets per foot did shear it can only drop 1/4". The top and bottom cross panels with the Hat Channels on them merely hold the 2 side panels upright.

Now this is for a static load. If I was building this to be mobile or mounted in a trailer going do the road I would ad more rivets, a full back to create another shear plane. And I would step up the gauge of the foot material and change the side panels adding return flanges top and bottom.

When creating shear planes the forming has to be perfect to allow for tight holes so the rivets have to be lightly tapped in. for an 1/8 rivet we use a .135 dia hole for the "head side" of the rivet and .130 dia for the "tail side" of the rivet. Thus the forming has to be +/-.005 to .008 to get things to come together correctly. I did not have to ream a single hole in this assembly to get it together. If you look at the Hat Channels that is across 4 bends but with the CNC punches, Lasers and Brakes it is doable with good people and good tooling.

So in a nut shelf I like to use the techniques we promote in our business on my own projects so I can learn as I build and apply as I sell.

Damn bud, that's very impressive work. I need to build a matching cabinet to a collection of lista units in order to finish a project. Can I come play in your shop for a day, I buy all the drinks everyone could possibly drink.

Hot dang. You almost **** for that being so sweet!

Nice writeup!! Having the right tooling really makes the job. The ONLY thing I would change on the assemblies, for me, would be to put longer legs on on them. My old back ain't what she used to be......

jeepinerdeep said:

Hot dang. You almost **** for that being so sweet!

Click to expand...

Yeah, at $899, those would have been a real suckmagnet.

Wow! What an amazing transformation.

Awesome transformation!!

Sent from my RCT6773W42B using Tapatalk

Beautiful design work, and that's some really nice welding on the ss feet. I look forward to seeing the safe. I've been thinking about making one myself, but...!
Where are you at in MN? I'm 2 hours west of the twin cities.

Nicely done.

I used quite a bit of Galvanneal when I did sheet metal. All my carbon steel parts were powder coated. I needed the extra corrosion protection that Galvanneal provides.

Like you, I designed to replace welded joints with riveted joints whenever possible. Welding was a huge bottleneck in the shop. I had two very good welders and one or two that were OK. I also subbed out about 40% of the welding to a couple of weld shops, one dedicated to a few products and the other did robotic welding of heat exchangers. Even with multiple welding resources I could not keep up with the welding. As you mentioned, it's much easier to train someone to rivet.

Fully loaded for everything you need stored.
Great find and work on making them fit your needs. They look great.

Wow! those cabinets turned out nice Your shop looks awesome too, maybe some pictures of the shop?

Bears Fan said:

Wow! those cabinets turned out nice Your shop looks awesome too, maybe some pictures of the shop?

Click to expand...

Thank you!!!

I plan on doing a build thread one of these days. Just need more hours in a day. Had I known about this sight when I started my little project I would have kept up with it.

Finally finding some time to put the shop together. We moved my Mill, Lathe, Press Brake and Tools in Thanksgiving weekend. Since then I have been working 7 days a week trying to squeeze in an hour or 2 here and there.

At work today designing Store Fixtures...design, proto and production...have to have the rollout complete Jan 18th...thus the long hours.

1wook said:

Beautiful design work, and that's some really nice welding on the ss feet. I look forward to seeing the safe. I've been thinking about making one myself, but...!
Where are you at in MN? I'm 2 hours west of the twin cities.

Click to expand...

Thank you.

I am close to Stillwater...our Sheet Metal Fab Shop is in White Bear Lake.

Those look great. Nicely done. I acquired a few (9) sets at auction and have made tall steel tube frames and custom upper cabinets but I really like the looks of the bench style.

Looks Great and tons of storage.

You should buy the 90 LISTA drawers I have and turn them into cabinets
You could make some money at that...

Bob

And you are into unlimited hydro racing?

BTW, very nice work!

Nice job on those cabinets!

kbs2244 said:

And you are into unlimited hydro racing?

BTW, very nice work!

Click to expand...

Thank you. Not into Hydro Racing but I did run an NHRA Pro Stock Car for 5 season before coming to my senses and retiring.

Top notch work! I'd learn to weld just so I could work for you and learn a thing or two! You definitely have vision and the talent to pull it off! A rare quality these days, keep up the excellent work!

Bump for an awesome cabinet build.

Nice cabinets. Thanks for posting