When I run the cars I usually have a bunch of stuff in the back of my 4runner. It's strewn about and mixed into various boxes and pretty much a mess, like my workbench. One thing that I figured out with speed running is I probably want to bring a camera or several. That along with the SD cards, chargers, batteries, tripods, etc... It's a bunch of stuff that is going to get tossed around and possibly damaged. So I needed to get organized.
There are cases you can buy right off Amazon, but they are either enormous or too small. They also don't really hold what I want to secure, so I decided to do my own.
I started with an Apache 2800 case. This one I got a few years back on super sale with a coupon for like $15 from Harbor Freight. The pluck foam is pretty much crap and wears out quickly, so it was the perfect case to get re foamed.
For the interior I used two pieces of 1.5" this PE foam from Case Club. Since everything is black it matches well, or makes it hard to see depending on you look at it. You can buy some more expensive foam with colored layers and that stuff looks really good. But I'm cheap, so it's black. I might put some colored felt on top to give some contrast later.
To hold the media cards I picked up a small organizer from Amazon. It's very thin and hold enough media for an outing. The only problem is that it's a bit hard to get a hold of the cards, so I might add some tweezers to my box.
In Visio made the outline of the box and all the stuff I wanted to put in there. It prints across two pages, so the numbers on the top are for alignment. The red hatched area is my .75" keep out. If I did this again it's probably better off as 1" keep out.
I put thumb holes around some of the items, but they protrude enough that I don't really need the holes.
Then I laid out everything with paper cut outs.
Next I put my pattern on the foam and pinned everything down, pardon the shadow. Then started cutting. Note the second tripod isn't here yet, so didn't cut it out. I also wanted some space for a "dump" area for mounts, connectors, etc. The misc stuff I don't care too much about. I have that to finish when the tripod arrives.
If you do this, cut everything just a bit small so it's tight and doesn't wiggle. This is what my foam stack looks like now. I only had to cut the wrench and the cords in to the lower layer, but I could have just as easily laid them flat and kept it to one layer.
Another configuration I considered was a dual compartment setup. The case has some depth and I could actually do two layers. Put the light stuff on top and a piece of plastic with handle to remove it and get to the lower layer.
That's a lot more work than I wanted to do on this. Maybe the next time around if I'm feeling motivated.
There are cases you can buy right off Amazon, but they are either enormous or too small. They also don't really hold what I want to secure, so I decided to do my own.
I started with an Apache 2800 case. This one I got a few years back on super sale with a coupon for like $15 from Harbor Freight. The pluck foam is pretty much crap and wears out quickly, so it was the perfect case to get re foamed.
For the interior I used two pieces of 1.5" this PE foam from Case Club. Since everything is black it matches well, or makes it hard to see depending on you look at it. You can buy some more expensive foam with colored layers and that stuff looks really good. But I'm cheap, so it's black. I might put some colored felt on top to give some contrast later.
To hold the media cards I picked up a small organizer from Amazon. It's very thin and hold enough media for an outing. The only problem is that it's a bit hard to get a hold of the cards, so I might add some tweezers to my box.
In Visio made the outline of the box and all the stuff I wanted to put in there. It prints across two pages, so the numbers on the top are for alignment. The red hatched area is my .75" keep out. If I did this again it's probably better off as 1" keep out.
I put thumb holes around some of the items, but they protrude enough that I don't really need the holes.
Then I laid out everything with paper cut outs.
Next I put my pattern on the foam and pinned everything down, pardon the shadow. Then started cutting. Note the second tripod isn't here yet, so didn't cut it out. I also wanted some space for a "dump" area for mounts, connectors, etc. The misc stuff I don't care too much about. I have that to finish when the tripod arrives.
If you do this, cut everything just a bit small so it's tight and doesn't wiggle. This is what my foam stack looks like now. I only had to cut the wrench and the cords in to the lower layer, but I could have just as easily laid them flat and kept it to one layer.
Another configuration I considered was a dual compartment setup. The case has some depth and I could actually do two layers. Put the light stuff on top and a piece of plastic with handle to remove it and get to the lower layer.
That's a lot more work than I wanted to do on this. Maybe the next time around if I'm feeling motivated.
