Influencer II
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Goal: simple day to day life, small(ish), offroad capable – a Jeep Gladiator build
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Explorer I
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- McGahuey
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I 100% understand the reasoning behind getting rid of the patriot trailer. I've come to a similar realization with the RTT on top of the trailer as our only means of sleeping after doing the ID BDR last year. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love that setup, and it has worked extremely well. But, the ability to just roll into camp, level your sleeping space, and then crawl in and go to sleep can not be underestimated.
My favorite setup for moving everyday that I've had so far as still been the sleeping platform I had in my Xterra. Yes, it was tight, but it was comfortable, and very quick to set up.
We like having a trailer, but want the ability to roll in and have camp set up within 5 mins. We've opted to go the tear drop/square drop route ourselves.
I would be curious to experiment with induction cooking in the future. I've designed my trailer in a way where I can easily swap the 100Ah LiFePO4 battery for a much larger one, so that might be something I try in the future.
Jeeps aren't really my thing, but I really like what you're doing here regarding your build. Following to watch the progress, and possibly get some ideas for mine as well.
My favorite setup for moving everyday that I've had so far as still been the sleeping platform I had in my Xterra. Yes, it was tight, but it was comfortable, and very quick to set up.
We like having a trailer, but want the ability to roll in and have camp set up within 5 mins. We've opted to go the tear drop/square drop route ourselves.
I would be curious to experiment with induction cooking in the future. I've designed my trailer in a way where I can easily swap the 100Ah LiFePO4 battery for a much larger one, so that might be something I try in the future.
Jeeps aren't really my thing, but I really like what you're doing here regarding your build. Following to watch the progress, and possibly get some ideas for mine as well.
Yeah, the Patriot Camper is a brilliant setup if it fits your style of travel. We absolutely LOVED the space in the tent, the "change room" was awesome to have, and the quality of these things is just out of this world. My bet is, that if we had gone with the X1H or the X3, we would still be towing a trailer.
Our style of traveling is that we move pretty much every single day. We never go for a weekend of camping to one spot. Camping and all the gear and setup for it is a necessity we deal with to get away from people (therefore the Jeep, it gets easily just a little beyond where the Sprinter and Subaru crowds hang out) and to be independent – that's the reason for the cooking/sleeping/living setup.
Therefore, convenience is king.
Dealing with propane, while it might give that nice feeling of open flame cooking, is just a pain in the rear. As soon as you leave North America (which at some point we will), you deal with adapters, availability issues, regulations, etc. We also have a rig in Europe and believe it or not, every frigging country in Europe has different standards and regulations for attachments, fill stations, etc. It's completely bonkers. That's why so many people in Europe still use Butane or Iso-Butane/Propane mixes. The small canisters are generally available, but they are insanely wasteful and expensive. Plus, most of them don't work well in cold conditions, in high evelation, on odd weekdays, and generally have a temper I don't like to deal with. We have incredibly good experience with the MSR Windburner, but that's about it, and the only thing these stoves are good for is boiling water.
Cooking with induction is just plain incredible, once you have a setup together that works for you. Low temperature is very easy to regulate, it doesn't care about wind, it works in every temperature and every elevation, you can use it inside a camper without a second thought, and it also enables all the other goodness of electric cooking since you've already set up your electrical system to deal with the load. That includes air fryers, travel ovens, electric kettles, milk frothers if you're a coffee lover, even mixers or other things you may want to bring along a trip. And the best part is: you go to a hotel room once in a while to clean up, wash and dry clothers, have a long hot shower and real bed AND you can take that cooking equipment and are not relying on restaurants, takeouts, Starbucks, or whatever.
There is also no need to ever refill propane bottles. Cooking and heating the camper with propane would drive me nuts. It's okay for maybe a a few days or so or if you never have to use a heater, but as soon as it's cold, a heater is taking insane amounts of propane away from your cooking supply, depending on the setup, it might produce a lot of condensation, and so on. Yeah, we still have to install our diesel heater, but once that is done, the combination of electric cooking and diesel heating means we are relying on only one fuel to be replenished: diesel. The batteries are charged either via alternator while driving and the heater takes the same fuel as the truck.
A quick teaser of our plan regarding more electric cooking goodness:
Test fitting a 12V travel oven in our galley module (more to come on that later, we are still building it). We'll be using this to re-heat food and generally to have easy cooked meals ready when we arrive at camp – yes, this can be used while driving.
There are some other things we went a completely different route from the typical overlander, e.g. living space inside the tiny truck camper, a REAL composting toilet, no winch (this might actually change at some point), etc.
There is a whole bunch more information to come when I get the time to write it or when it's actually done ... ;-)
Our style of traveling is that we move pretty much every single day. We never go for a weekend of camping to one spot. Camping and all the gear and setup for it is a necessity we deal with to get away from people (therefore the Jeep, it gets easily just a little beyond where the Sprinter and Subaru crowds hang out) and to be independent – that's the reason for the cooking/sleeping/living setup.
We considered this as well, but disliked the fact that most of these trailers are very wide. It might not be a problem, but we've been on many trails that were so tight, a seven feet wide trailer would be a challenge, especially when the travel goes beyond the realm of North America. Plus all the other challenges we had with trailers in general.
It's been a revelation for us. One of the things my wife and I both hated was dealing with propane. We "travel". We like to see things. We like to take routes that aren't necessarily paved or in good conditions, but we aren't what you might see as the typical US West overlanders – going on very difficult trails, pushing their rigs to the limit, etc. All that means is that we aren't in this for camping and/or offroading lifestyle, we are in this to get around and see places.
Therefore, convenience is king.
Dealing with propane, while it might give that nice feeling of open flame cooking, is just a pain in the rear. As soon as you leave North America (which at some point we will), you deal with adapters, availability issues, regulations, etc. We also have a rig in Europe and believe it or not, every frigging country in Europe has different standards and regulations for attachments, fill stations, etc. It's completely bonkers. That's why so many people in Europe still use Butane or Iso-Butane/Propane mixes. The small canisters are generally available, but they are insanely wasteful and expensive. Plus, most of them don't work well in cold conditions, in high evelation, on odd weekdays, and generally have a temper I don't like to deal with. We have incredibly good experience with the MSR Windburner, but that's about it, and the only thing these stoves are good for is boiling water.
Cooking with induction is just plain incredible, once you have a setup together that works for you. Low temperature is very easy to regulate, it doesn't care about wind, it works in every temperature and every elevation, you can use it inside a camper without a second thought, and it also enables all the other goodness of electric cooking since you've already set up your electrical system to deal with the load. That includes air fryers, travel ovens, electric kettles, milk frothers if you're a coffee lover, even mixers or other things you may want to bring along a trip. And the best part is: you go to a hotel room once in a while to clean up, wash and dry clothers, have a long hot shower and real bed AND you can take that cooking equipment and are not relying on restaurants, takeouts, Starbucks, or whatever.
There is also no need to ever refill propane bottles. Cooking and heating the camper with propane would drive me nuts. It's okay for maybe a a few days or so or if you never have to use a heater, but as soon as it's cold, a heater is taking insane amounts of propane away from your cooking supply, depending on the setup, it might produce a lot of condensation, and so on. Yeah, we still have to install our diesel heater, but once that is done, the combination of electric cooking and diesel heating means we are relying on only one fuel to be replenished: diesel. The batteries are charged either via alternator while driving and the heater takes the same fuel as the truck.
A quick teaser of our plan regarding more electric cooking goodness:
Test fitting a 12V travel oven in our galley module (more to come on that later, we are still building it). We'll be using this to re-heat food and generally to have easy cooked meals ready when we arrive at camp – yes, this can be used while driving.
There are some other things we went a completely different route from the typical overlander, e.g. living space inside the tiny truck camper, a REAL composting toilet, no winch (this might actually change at some point), etc.
There is a whole bunch more information to come when I get the time to write it or when it's actually done ... ;-)
Explorer I
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A 7 foot wide trailer wouldn't fit where I wanna go most of the time either. That's why I'm building a 5 foot trailer.
I see your point about the propane being difficult once you leave the US. I don't share your hatret of propane (it's all I've ever used), but I completely understand your point of view. When taking a vehicle international, induction cooking would make sense.
Oh! A travel buddy!! I've wanted one for a long while. Maybe I find a way to put one in the trailer....
It really comes down what effort you want to deal with.
We are doing some traveling in fall/winter conditions where we need a heater in the cabin, even just to protect the water and electrical systems. So it would run a lot. There is a Dickinson propane fireplace for the Canopy Camper, which would have to run about 10 to 14h per day at a low setting, using about 2lbs of propane per day. And I don't even know whether I could run it while driving – whether it's safe, which I assume it is.
Then add cooking, heating water for drinks and a shower from time to time. A propane bottle that is reasonable to carry with my rig (11lbs) would last maybe four to five days. That's too often for my taste.
If it's used just for cooking, it would last a few weeks, no problem, but then all the other problems I've experienced come into play. Wind sensitivity, low heat cooking issues (the Jetboil Gemini we have is a PoS, it's been broken most of the time we owned it), dealing with open flame, do I want to use an open flame inside the camper, and so on.
For us, it plain doesn't work. And we tried. It worked with the Patriot Camper, but again, that was a pain in the butt sometimes: three fuel types (gasoline for the car, diesel for the hot water system/heater, propane for cooking). I couldn't solve this issue fast enough even though I LOVED the Weber grill.
It doesn't take much power (10A) and it doesn't get hot outside. But it takes forever to heat up. Plan for about 45 Minutes at least just to get to temp to get a slow cook started. If you can run it while driving it's better when you get higher voltage through the charging system. But with a modern car alternator even that isn't necesserily the case. We'll run it off LFP batteries, which seems to work okay in testing.
If you are more into cooking when you arrive at camp, an air fryer might actually work much better, but needs much more power.
Explorer I
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I completely understand. The biggest benefit of building your own rig is that you get to build it to fit exactly what you need.
I'm struggling personally with the idea of having to carry multiple fuel types myself, but in the interest of build cost savings, it's really my only option. Gas stoves all run on propane, with the exception of old Coleman white gas stoves. Those however are obviously old, and are considerably bulkier than my current setup. With my current usage, a 5lb propane tank will last a few weeks easily. Induction cooking would be an option for me, but I would need FAR more battery capacity, as well as a rather large {2000w most likely) inverter, and the complexity of building that system as well. The I'd need to address charging that.
With my current setup, a 100Ah battery is more than sufficient, and can be charged with a 20A DC-DC charger, and augmented with a 200w solar panel.
I would LOVE to use either a propex or gasoline heater for the cabin, but the cost difference between that and a cheap diesel heater is about 10 fold.
So, in my case, the desire to keep the build as cost effective as possible wins over the simplicity of only having to carry one or two types of fuel, as those products would make it impossible for me to complete the build in a reasonable time frame.
Most air fryers require around 1000w. We thought about doing that, but I'm trying to avoid putting in more than a 750w inverter.
We are however, contemplating picking up a 6 qt travel crock pot with a Latching and sealed lid. But, I don't want to have to upgrade my dc-dc setup, and that would likely use more power out of the battery than is put into it while traveling.
I very much enjoy having conversations like this. Seeing how people think through the obstacles and issues that they have, and come to the conclusions they do helps the community as a whole.
I can't wait to see more build progress from your setup!
Advocate III
Absolutely! And, while I have strong personal opinions about propane or other liquid fuel cooking options, if it works for you, that's all that counts! I just sometimes have stronger opinions than is good for myself ... ;-)
I can totally understand this point. This build has cost us A LOT. Especially time and nerves, but also in tools (we bought nearly all the tools needed to build this), learning curve (we had to learn a lot of new skills), and materials (we didn't want to use "cheap" stuff or cloned chinese copies of original designs, e.g. diesel heater). The build process we chose for the furniture also made it about 10x more expensive than it could have been. 80/20 extrusion is insanely expensive for something like this. If, at the start of the build, I had the woodworking knowledge and skills I have today, I would have built the whole furniture in baltic birch only. I would have been lighter, and probably about six to eight times cheaper. But, llive and learn.
Yes, that's a good start, but insufficient for induction cooking. We have probably the minimal setup necessary for that in terms of capacity. We chose Renogy batteries for their integrated BMS and self-heating option at a reasonable price, but went with Redarc for all the rest of the components. The whole system is:
- 200Ah battery capacity in two 100Ah LFP batteries
- 2000W Redarc inverter
- Redarc Manager 30 charger for solar, DCDC, as well as 115V charging
- Redarc BCDC25 for additional capacity with a solar blanket and 25A DCDC optional charging
- The above two give us up to 55A DCDC charging capacity; the alternator in the Jeep is a big one, since we have the tow package and the diesel engine, so no worries there
- Redarc RedVision 80A power distribution and a Bluesea subpanel (the subpanel still needs to be wired, but will support the galley module (write-up later)
- We don't have solar yet, but plan on adding a 150W CIGS flexible panel from Renogy since it's the only one that halfway satisfies my wishlist
We can charge the battery capacity we use on a typical day with cooking and coffee/tea breaks with about two hours of driving. When we get solar, it'll shorten the drive time.
Correct, that's the downside of them. We are already set up for high power consumption, so could have gone that route. The reason we didn't was that all the air fryers we found were either cheap stuff or too large. The cheap ones may or may not work properly, I have pretty bad experience and my motto has been "I'm not rich enough to buy cheap things". I've seen the "buy cheap, buy twice" too often.
Same! I've learned a lot from what people are doing. I like watching some of the Aussie Youtube channels, these guys are way ahead technologically compared to the typical American setup. Similar to the Europeans, but they do things slightly differently, mainly due to different typical weather conditions (more indoor living).
I'd say in about two to three weeks we should have the galley module ready to show, then I'll do a complete walk-through for the furniture. Until then I'll probably describe some of the build process and ideas behind it.
Give me until Tuesday or Wednesday, we'll be on a 400 mile trip and should have some ideas on how it performs (without the Maxtrax this time, it's purely a roadtrip). So far, I'd say it should make things better, but they really couldn't be any worse than with a Gladiator and that bluntnosed camper on top.
Endurance III
I would highly recommend against the flexible panels, i had 9 of them on my setup and none of them lasted over 6 months, the majority got heat spots and about 50% reduction in output after about 3 months. Hard panels in my experience are going to be more efficient and hold up better. If you can fit them (imo) it would be the better choice.
Explorer I
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I'm so glad you spotted this thread. I was gonna throw out a mention so you could give your experience with the flexible panels.
His experience caused my to adjust the design of my trailer in order to accommodate a 200w rigid panel on the front angle.
I've heard the horror stories regarding renogys customer service. All I have are their 20A dc chargers. Both are still working flawlessly. But, if/when they fail, I'll be replacing them with victron chargers. My solar chargers are both hqst chargers. I have a 40A in the X (thanks @K12), but that will get moved to the trailer. Monitoring will be done via a Simarine Pico system.
I really like what @K12 has done in his black series with monitoring via the victron cerbo, but that's way out of my budget. The Simarine Pico works in a similar way, albeit not wirelessly, and for much less money. I prefer having things on physical switches myself, and am well versed in 13v layouts and wiring. The redarc system is super cool, and I love the way it integrates, but I prefer to separate my components
Was any of this experience with the newer CIGS panels? I’ve heard the same about the old flexible panels, but other than early model delamination issues from BougeRV I’ve heard only good things about the CIGS panels.
The reason I’m interested in the CIGS panels is weight. Using hard panels would mean a significant difference very high up in the rig.
Endurance III
I can wait a little bit on this and see whether reviews of these change my mind. We’ll see. I had originally planned on a hard panel, but including all the mounting hardware needed, I might end up nearly 20 lbs heavier up top and would prefer not to do this.
Definitely a big thank you for bringing this up. I may have talked myself into the CIGS panels from early good reviews. Will give it some time. We have enough DCDC charge power to just use that.
Endurance III
That makes sense, having the solar is definitely a great thing to have, its "free" energy. The bougeRV 9BB/10BB panels are awesome, they dont weight too much and mounting materials are lightwight. I just got some Z-brackets and they are doing perfect. I've mounted a 400w panel and 10x100w panels with them, they have held up to wind/hail/snow/heat etc with no problems. But if there is a flexible option that works just as well its awesome, and weight saving is huge.
That means I probably need crossbars on top of the camper to mount the panel inbetween with the z-brackets. The loadbars are about 2.5kg per bar, so 5kg for the loadbars, about 12kg for a 200W panel (just looked up the Redarc, they are probably all similar), lets say another 500g for all the hardware – 17.5kg.
The Renogy (I know, I know) 150W CIGS panel is 3kg.
A difference of 14.5 kg – that's 32 lbs. Ugh. Or 12kg (26.5 lbs) if the loadbars are 2.5kg per pair (see edit below). Still a big difference.
Edit: Small correction, it's unclear whether the weight of the loadbars is 2.5kg per bar or per pair. It might be per pair, that would also make more sense regarding general weight of extrusion of that length.
We've been on a short road trip these last two days. About 300 miles actually, not the 400 planned, but long enough to get get some impressions:
- The roof rack seems to help a tiny little bit with noise. Not much, since I haven't really noticed the camper much in terms of noise, but maybe a little bit.
- There were some "turbulences" at times, but it might have well been in a way that I would have heard without the rack as well. I can't compare directly since circumstances vary.
- The rack also seems like just a litte with fuel consumption. On our way back I was in cruise control at around 60mph most of the time to go with the pretty busy traffic and according to the OBC ended up with around 9.2L/100km or 25.5mpg for the ~ 130miles from the Sacramento area to the SF Bay Area. I have not seen this kind of fuel consumption since putting on the camper, but it is too early to really tell. We need a few fill ups on a normal trip to actually compare. I've been tracking consumption since new, so at least I have some comparison data.
I'm personally happy with the roof rack, it seems to work nicely, we didn't have the Maxtrax on this time though.
As I've mentioned before, we are building the interior of our Canopy Camper with 80/20. It's a great system that has all kinds of goodies and you can build amazing things with it. But, I want to put a damper on this.
There are some very nice upsides to using 80/20, like the flexibilty, stability, and – to a degree – ease of use. The issues start, when you really want to build furniture. It'll ALWAYS get more complicated than you thought in the beginning.
We aren't fully done yet with our interior build, so the following photos can be a teaser for a full walk through once the main parts of the furniture are all done.
When it's all done, it can look great – of course, depending on taste – and work really well:
The above is for all our clothing and personal stuff (straight on) and the "utility unit" (right side of the photo) which houses the batteries, inverter, some more electrical stuff, water pump, filter, toilet, etc.
When done it looks great, but it's a complicated beast underneath. The bench for our personal gear:
And the utility module:
There are tons of details that need to be sorted out that you wouldn't expect beforehand. Like, how do you install a latch keeper for the Southco latches:
The small piece of plywood across above the door holds the latch keeper and is used as a doorstop.
It can take a contortionist to get to some of the bolts/nuts/connections:
Of course, that's mainly because we designed our own furniture and probably made every mistake possible. But we learned a lot on the way.
Currently we are working on a galley module that will complete our furniture build, here's the current state:
This stuff gets complicated VERY fast – you start with something and then you go crazy. The above galley will have seven (7) doors, six on the front visible above, one more on the rear, which will also double as a table for outside, so we can utilize it when using our Travel Oven:
Now, all that being said, there are some difficulties in this.
The galley module has
I certainly hope it'll be worth it.
Give me a shout if you want to hear more about 80/20.
I've written a bunch of posts on another forum with thoughts, recommendations, tips&tricks and so on. It's not as easy as people make it out to be and there are tons of mistakes that could be avoided by knowing what you're getting into when using this system. I can summarize these here.
There are some very nice upsides to using 80/20, like the flexibilty, stability, and – to a degree – ease of use. The issues start, when you really want to build furniture. It'll ALWAYS get more complicated than you thought in the beginning.
We aren't fully done yet with our interior build, so the following photos can be a teaser for a full walk through once the main parts of the furniture are all done.
When it's all done, it can look great – of course, depending on taste – and work really well:
The above is for all our clothing and personal stuff (straight on) and the "utility unit" (right side of the photo) which houses the batteries, inverter, some more electrical stuff, water pump, filter, toilet, etc.
When done it looks great, but it's a complicated beast underneath. The bench for our personal gear:
And the utility module:
There are tons of details that need to be sorted out that you wouldn't expect beforehand. Like, how do you install a latch keeper for the Southco latches:
The small piece of plywood across above the door holds the latch keeper and is used as a doorstop.
It can take a contortionist to get to some of the bolts/nuts/connections:
Of course, that's mainly because we designed our own furniture and probably made every mistake possible. But we learned a lot on the way.
Currently we are working on a galley module that will complete our furniture build, here's the current state:
This stuff gets complicated VERY fast – you start with something and then you go crazy. The above galley will have seven (7) doors, six on the front visible above, one more on the rear, which will also double as a table for outside, so we can utilize it when using our Travel Oven:
Now, all that being said, there are some difficulties in this.
The galley module has
- Seven doors
- Two drawers
- The drawer double as small interior tables
- A sink
- A grey water tank
- 14 hinges,
- 36 panel mounts (yes, that's totally crazy, I agree),
- over 50 M6 taps,
- over 20 access holes drilled,
- over 45 individual wood pieces cut
I certainly hope it'll be worth it.
Give me a shout if you want to hear more about 80/20.
I've written a bunch of posts on another forum with thoughts, recommendations, tips&tricks and so on. It's not as easy as people make it out to be and there are tons of mistakes that could be avoided by knowing what you're getting into when using this system. I can summarize these here.
Explorer I
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80/20 is a wonderful material to build things out of for sure. The cost goes up exponentially when you start buying the connectors and all the other bits needed to put it together. I wanted to use it when I was building the drawers for my Xterra, but decided against it for the cost reason, ultimately.
Still, I love it, and love working with it. The design of your parts is fantastic, and I can't wait to see the final pieces.
I'll start a small series of posts, just with tips on how to use 80/20 efficiently – keeping weight and cost to the bare minimum. This will be a few posts as otherwise each post just gets too long.
#1 – Use internal connectors
There is a desire to just use inside corner brackets for building, but using them gets expensive very quickly. For example, for a three-way corner in a piece of furniture (let's say a box), three of these are needed to create a stable corner. At $4.36 each, plus six economy t-nuts ($0.42 each), plus 6 bolts ($0.30 when bought from 80/20) this comes out at $17.40 for a single corner. A box has eight corners => $139.20 just for the corners.
Using a light squared three-way corner plus the recommended three bolts comes out at $14.88 per corner or $119.04 for the box. That's $20 saved right there. Cuts need to be more precise in length, the three extrusions ending in that corner need taps, but al lthat can be done realitively easy.
Plus there is a significant weight saving involved using the much nicer looking corners – about 217g or 0.48lbs just for all the corners.
Then there is an even bigger difference when you use end fasteners instead of inside corner brackets to install a piece of extrusion to perpendicularly connect to other extrusions (e.g. for a shelf or so). With end fastener, two are needed (one on each end), with inside corner brackets it's 4 brackets, 8 t-nuts, 8 bolts (at least three needed, I'm calculating 4 to prevent turning on each end). Cost difference is $18.68 and weight difference is about 80g per such connection.
Our galley module has 12 such connections, resulting in a max of $224 cost and 957g (over 2lbs) of weight savings, plus $20 and 217g from the corners. I can take three cans of beer more AND saved $244.
There is also a visual benefit of using internal connectors:
There are no inside corner brackets used in the above construction, the side view is very clean, I've added the 9mm plywood space for optical reasons to close the gap between the two extrusions. It's bolted to the lower extrusion with two countersunk bolts and two t-nuts.
All that's visible from this kind of connection are the access holes to tighten the bolts:
Don't mind the notes on the extrusion, these are just our markings for drilling and identifying pieces when assembling the framework. The holes are very small (just under 6mm diameter) and barely visible when the furniture is assembled.
Now, to the downsides of internal connectors:
I hope this helps!
#1 – Use internal connectors
There is a desire to just use inside corner brackets for building, but using them gets expensive very quickly. For example, for a three-way corner in a piece of furniture (let's say a box), three of these are needed to create a stable corner. At $4.36 each, plus six economy t-nuts ($0.42 each), plus 6 bolts ($0.30 when bought from 80/20) this comes out at $17.40 for a single corner. A box has eight corners => $139.20 just for the corners.
Using a light squared three-way corner plus the recommended three bolts comes out at $14.88 per corner or $119.04 for the box. That's $20 saved right there. Cuts need to be more precise in length, the three extrusions ending in that corner need taps, but al lthat can be done realitively easy.
Plus there is a significant weight saving involved using the much nicer looking corners – about 217g or 0.48lbs just for all the corners.
Then there is an even bigger difference when you use end fasteners instead of inside corner brackets to install a piece of extrusion to perpendicularly connect to other extrusions (e.g. for a shelf or so). With end fastener, two are needed (one on each end), with inside corner brackets it's 4 brackets, 8 t-nuts, 8 bolts (at least three needed, I'm calculating 4 to prevent turning on each end). Cost difference is $18.68 and weight difference is about 80g per such connection.
Our galley module has 12 such connections, resulting in a max of $224 cost and 957g (over 2lbs) of weight savings, plus $20 and 217g from the corners. I can take three cans of beer more AND saved $244.
There is also a visual benefit of using internal connectors:
There are no inside corner brackets used in the above construction, the side view is very clean, I've added the 9mm plywood space for optical reasons to close the gap between the two extrusions. It's bolted to the lower extrusion with two countersunk bolts and two t-nuts.
All that's visible from this kind of connection are the access holes to tighten the bolts:
Don't mind the notes on the extrusion, these are just our markings for drilling and identifying pieces when assembling the framework. The holes are very small (just under 6mm diameter) and barely visible when the furniture is assembled.
Now, to the downsides of internal connectors:
- Extrusion length has to be cut very precisely to achieve square furniture. Best is to order the pieces cut to length right from 80/20 since their process results in extremely accurate parts. We can generally achieve good enough precision on our miter saw, but it's sometimes a bit of a struggle.
- Access holes have to be drilled precisely in the place where the connection should be.
- Due to the point above, flexibility in placement is completely lost.
- Extrusion ends have to be thread-tapped.
- Build with inside corner brackets (and three-way corners when placement is obvious).
- Arrange, re-arrange, fit whatever you want to put into the space, etc.
- Measure your result as precisely as possible.
- Replace inside corner brackets with internal connectors where possible.
I hope this helps!
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