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Searching for Quailty A/V Carts?
Tyrson asks: "I work at a university and we are looking to purchase new A/V carts. At the moment we have the plain and simple shelves-on-wheels and the nicer multimedia display carts. The simple carts are sturdy yet insecure and lack useful features. The display carts are secure and useful yet built from weaker materials that only last a few semesters. We are looking for A/V carts with useful features preferably built from metal or plastics. After googling it and making some phone calls I had found several good carts that were sadly upwards of $1,200 apiece. I don't expect them to be cheap, but $1,200 was a little to steep. Does Slashdot have some suggestions for us?"
Not sure exactly what you are looking for, but try this category at Long's AV. Also search for 'cart' to see more. $100 to $600.
I think not. Maybe if you had not wasted so much time checking your spelling and checking to make sure your CAPS LOCK key was not accidently set you would have made it.
C'Mon, honestly !! I can't be the only one that's not heard of these.. As far as I can tell, you're referring to and Audio/Video Cartridge? BUt the 'shelves' reference throws that out the window. Or are you looking for a shopping cart with an Audio/Video display on it for showing the customers adverts while they cruise the aisles??
AV Carts are Audio Video Cartridges used in high volume A/V data media centers.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
Pedanism , Honestly does it really matter .If he wants an A/V card for game-birds then whats your problem with that.
In our university complex (and I suspect in many) we have machine shops that are well equipped enough to build nearly anything you have the imagination for, and plenty of classes where students are taught and trained to do the building. Why not take your request to the professors of these classes and have them build some for you? It would be an excellent practical project for the students and you could save a boatload of money on parts/labour for a system that could be custom built to fit your needs.
An example of a similar project happened a few years ago when the university needed a new retaining wall built for a pretty high and nasty hill next to the road. The old wall was basically a big slab of concrete and it had a very pronounced lean towards the road and was in danger of collapsing, so instead of hiring someone to design a new one they gave the project to the senior engineering students who designed a new wall for their school. That part of campus that was once an eyesore is now a beautiful piece of landscaping.
Go to your local hardware supercenter and invest $60 in plywood and nails. Build your carts exaclty like you want em. Done!
I've seen some lame Ask Slashdots but requests for sourcing of standard commodity itemstakes the cake. What next? Dear Slashdot, where's the best place to buy toilet paper? Sheesh!
Buy -one- of each of the top three candidates. Conduct a trial to determine which works best, and what features from the #2 and #3 you would also like.
Now, find the local Vo-Tech and ask them if they would be interested in manufacturing a few custom carts to your specs.
I guess they've changed their name to metro, but they have modular commercial shelf systems capable of carrying 800 lbs. per shelf. To turn them into a cart just requires modular parts like big beefy wheels. I put together my entertainment center from their parts and had my fat ass relatives sit on them to test the weight claim. I'm very happy with them and I can always turn them into something else. They're chromed steel so I don't have worries of scratching them or corrosion. I did put solid wood panels on the shelves for looks and a more stable surface for my electronics but you might prefer the ventilation.
If you disagree then it must be overrated, redundant or trolling.
Anthro Corporation has some of the best components to make A/V and general computer carts around. You can make a pretty pricey cart, but you can also get by with a reasonably priced cart. The best part is that you can configure the cart exactly the way that you need it. The carts are extremely sturdy and well built.
Look out for their sales. The April sale was 35% off on phone orders
Anthro makes some excellent products that could probably be configured to meet your needs. I use an Anthro fit System Standard unit as my primary desk, and I absolutely love it. I think their utility cart would probably suit you well. They also do quantity discounts based on the dollar value of your order.
Good luck.
My church / preschool makes them themselves from high quality plywood and hardware. They've outlasted plenty of commercial furniture.
We've used the lectern/podium units from SMARTdesks. They cost $1000+, but were lockable and had lots of nice features and custom options (we had custom cut-outs for VCR's in the front doors).
My main beef with them is that, though sturdier than some, they did still tend to break down (broken hinges, etc.) over time.
One annoyance that we've had to deal with is that in order for these to be relatively movable in a classroom, we have to tether them to a wall panel with a sizable cable bundle (power, vga, VCR a/v, ethernet, etc.). Of course, now we would go with wi-fi instead of wired ethernet, but still can't get around the other cables. I sure would like to find a better way...
This isn't a dumb question at all. A couple of months ago I was planning one of these out. I wanted a rackmounted computer/sound system for my church on a cart, so that I could move it anywhere in or out of the building, and still be setup quickly. I wanted to keep it closed, for better security. I also wanted to have a ventilation system, complete with a a temperature-controlled switch to turn on extra fans if the equipment gets too hot. I wanted to have a KVM so that someone could plug in a laptop if they needed to run the projector without having to know how everything in it works. Unfortunately, I lacked funding, so I never got to find out how my design would work.
Yet another "Dear /., where can I find good shit for cheap?"
Colour me surprised.
Just look for a Tektronix Scopemobile cart. The older, the more metal it has.
Mostly random stuff.
I am not sure if you are commenting here on "getting someone" or "welding" - if the former, I appollogize for the following, but if the latter...
For a beginner, welding is anything but easy. Welding is a skill that takes a lot of practice and a bit of stamina as well. It takes a knowledge of metals and heat, how thickness of metal, temperature of the metal, the kind of metal (and in certain cases, if you are welding two similar, but not quite the same types of steel together, the knowledge of that), etc - to produce a good weld.
It takes practice to learn what a good weld looks like, and if you are stick welding, what the welding process sounds like to make a good weld (if your stick is too close, you will stick to the weld and short, too far, and you will sputter with less heat on the weld, producing a "cold" weld, which is weak).
Complete knowledge of all types of welding is not necessary, but knowledge is always a good thing - you have options of rod/stick welding, gas welding (using an oxy/acet rig generally - though there are such weird things as "Brown's Gas" generators for welding using hydrogen/oxygen mix), and wire-feed (which is basically rod welding, but with wire instead of a solid rod - sometimes with flux core, other times with argon for MIG work).
Welding is anything but easy, especially for a beginner. Wire-feed can probably be picked up quicker than the other methods, but I am biased to stick welding, because it teaches patience and control (in stick welding you have to learn to strike the arc, get it going, make the weld, see the weld, move the rod along the weld path, while simultaneously feeding the rod into the weld as you progress - very, very difficult to learn, takes a TON of patience - in wire-feed, you set a control to control the rate at which the wire is fed into the weld automatically - you still have to learn how to set the rate for the weld you are doing). When you are working with hot (very, very hot) metal - patience and control are essential. If you don't have both, serious accidents and injuries are inevitable (not that even an experienced welder won't have accidents - a big one is not being able to see a fire in the welding mask, the flame doesn't have a high enough heat to register).
I would also reccommend starting with a standard welding mask and learning to strike the arc "blind" (I swear, it is like a Jedi mind trick or something to strike that arc blind - one the arc is struck, you can *easily* see what you are doing then) - once you get comfortable with this, move on to an auto-darkening mask.
Also, one of the big mistakes beginning welders sometimes make is not wearing dark clothes (light clothes can reflect the arc light under the mask and cause a temporary, but painful condition, called "welder's blindness" - basically a UV exposure burn on the eyes), or using regular leather gloves instead of welding gloves (pick up that hot metal piece you just welded and feel the burn instantly!).
Finally - there is knowing how to gas weld and how to use an oxy/acet rig to cut steel and other metals (fun stuff!).
I don't say these things to make welding seem like it is too difficult - once you begin learning how to weld and start making things welding, you never look at metal the same way again. You start to see ways of doing things that can only be done with raw steel. You start looking at scrap metal parts and such in a completely different light - "ooh, shiny - what can I weld up with that!". I encourage anyone who has ever thought about welding to look into doing so - it isn't too expensive to get started (just don't go overboard with a 220V Hobart Wire-Feed rig on your first outing) - small welding projects can easily be taken on for under a $200.00 cash outlay for equipment. That will get you a small 110V AC buzzbox rod welder (fine for 1/16" to 3/8" welds), some 1/16" rod, a mask, a pair of gloves, a welding chipper hammer, and a wire brush. Some
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
No, no. You should always try to find a comercially available product before custom making one (unless it's for fun or for learning something yourself) Yes, we could all knit our own clothing and build our own houses, but specialization of labor is a basic principle of Western Civilization and ignoring it means wasting your time doing tasks it's cheaper to hire others to do. Why would anyone want to get custom-made equipment commissioned for such a clearly commercially-available product? Also, about that wall. Unless this wall was built in a jurisdiction or country that has no uniform building code, a licensed structural or civil engineer had to run the calculations on the wall's structural properties and had to stamp the drawings. It's a nice fantasy to imagine a bunch of students created something aesthetically superior to the previous retaining wall, but they didn't; it was created by licensed, trained and experienced specialists, not a bunch of college students. They may have helped, but no professional engineer (P.E.) would risk his or her accreditation and liability insurance by allowing engineering students to be the primary creators of something as potentially dangerous as a retaining wall.
In theory, theory is better than practice, but in practice, it isn't.
You want a cart "with useful features" but you don't have any idea what they could be? I bet when you call customer support you ask "My Windows doesn't work. Can you tell me what's wrong?" Least intelligent question, evah.