How to Make a Plywood Hanging White Board Frame

This Instructable goes through the basic steps of making a simple plywood frame to slide a salvaged white board into for the front desk at Techshop...

Step 1: Decide on Construction

This frame was designed to be cut out on the shop bot at Techshop. The basic design is two horizontal runners with slots that the white board could be easily slid into. Between these two runners would be four vertical runners to support the flex of the white board while it was being written on as well as to structurally hold the whole frame together. The frame is mounted on a black pipe frame and essentially hangs by pipe clamps so the plywood frame structure needed to be super strong and rigid.
The horizontal runners are 1.5" thick, 4" tall and 48" long. These runners were created by stacking two pieces of 3/4" plywood together with the thickness of the whiteboard taken away from the thickness of one of the two stacked pieces to create the slot for the whiteboard. The included drawing attempts to show this via a cut away view of the stacked pieces.

Step 2: More Construction

The four faces of the vertical runners had to be on the same plane as the back of the slots to be able to support the back of the whiteboard, so attaching the vertical pieces to the horizontal ones involved an end grain to end grain joint that I didn't like. I could have used screws, dowels or biscuits to attach the vertical slats but considering I was using the shop bot already I decided to attempt a half lap puzzle joint that was well suited to CNC fabrication. The attached drawing shows all of the parts needed to be cut. The four holes on each horizontal runner are for the hardware to mount the whiteboard to the pipe frame.

Step 3: Make a V Carve Pro File

I made a V Carve file to create the shop bot part file. The included image shows this file set up. I used pockets to create the negative for the white board slot and to create the half lap joints.

Step 4: Cut Out the Parts

Shop bot all of the parts out!

Step 5: Clean Up the Parts...

The cut pieces were still attached to the main board because of the tabs I had inserted into the cut file, so I broke the parts out and sanded off tab remnants and rough edges. Then I test fit the whole thing. An orange mallet was necessary but it eventually all went together.

Step 6: Glue Up...

The puzzle joints fit tight enough that I didn't need any glue. Once these were in place, I glued up top and bottom horizontal runners and use brad nails to secure.