[Draft] Requirements[1]
These are the hard requirements for the project, if these are not achieved the enclosure is considered a failure.
- Enough noise reduction to facilitate cutting aluminum at 24,000 rpm at any hour without complaints [2]
- Ability to run long operations without issue from heat or air exchange when cutting aluminum. [3]
- Tool free access to the nomad, eg: no locking seals with bolts etc.
- Integrated flicker free lighting…Yeah light is a hard requirement.
- Reasonably fire safe
Soft requirements
The soft requirements are less important than the hard requirements but more important than the follow on “Nice to have’s”. I expect there will be more soft requirements than seems reasonable.
A good effort will be made to satisfy the soft requirements but I will not block on them.
- Plumbing for compressed air (Through the tubes of the extruded aluminum frame? Maybe
) - Bulk head for passing through power and data
- Facilitate chip cleanout
- Sealed [4]
- watertight around the enclosure bottom [5]
- Decoupling of the enclosure from the main structure
- Vesa mounting options for hanging a touch screen etc off of the enclosure (again, likely built into the extruded aluminum skeleton of the enclosure)
- Movable by one average American man (EG: me)
- Mounting options for automation accessories such as lighting controls and relays/solenoids for compressed air.
- Interior mounting options for accessories such as a webcam
Nice to have
These are just things I think would be nice but we won’t put great effort into accomplishing them.
- A pull out shelf for the nomad to sit on [6]
- The pullout nomad shelf should facilitate chip clearing, likely by way of steel grating as opposed to a solid shelf
- Integrated pull out bottom shelf to act as a reservoir with pump…or just a convenient chip tray.
- Bottom most shelf should be easily removable to facilitate cleaning and servicing.
- Buildable with just simple hand tools and a 3d printer.
Approach
This is a general overview of the approach for building and dampening.
The structure will be made with extruded aluminum. This material is easy to source ~everywhere and facilitates many of the needs I’ve laid out such as integrated pressurized fluids and various mounting options. It also helps that we can usually send a cut sheet with the order to get lengths ready to go at a reasonable cost.
Soft requirements and nice to have’s should be designed to be optional whenever possible. If someone does not want to integrate a pull out drawer system, it should not require a complete redesign. EG: Optionality should be built up as bolt on wherever possible.
When it comes to sizing and material selection, we will tend towards off the shelf materials/sizing wherever possible. As a contrived example, if it is easy to buy a precision steel rod in lengths of 100mm but we only need 90mm, the design intent would be to integrate the uncut 100mm length as opposed to requiring a cut.
Items that can be easily substituted should be called out along with an example of the suitable replacement. For instance, the 2lb/sq foot Accustiblok can be subbed out for 2lb/sq foot Mass Loaded Vinyl.
Items that can be substituted easily in order to trade cost for effect should also be called out. For instance, the 2lb/sq foot MLV can be subbed out for 1lb/sq foot MLV. This is roughly half the cost but will come at the expense of effectiveness.
In these cases, general guidance should be offered on impact to the rest of the design. 1lb/sq foot MLV is half the thickness, so any design considerations dependent on total wall thickness which may be impacted should be called out.
Sound Dampening Overview
The sound dampening design is heavily inspired by directly steals the design from a previous post by the most knowledgeable contributor I’ve come across.
Mark Bellon has provided the most complete examples and demonstrates the most complete understanding of sound conditioning that I’ve ever seen. This post was the inspiration for my entire project:
If I could pay Mark to design this for me, I would. Unfortunately I’m about a decade too late 
TLDR from his post:
It’s all about MASS , LAYERS , and effective use of materials. The walls are 3.5" thick and have 5 layers of sound suppression - outer skin, Green Glue - inner skin, Accustiblock, Quiet Fiber.
A final note: I use fusion 360 and my design will be fully modeled in fusion 360. If that’s not your jam, sorry. Maybe one of the kind forum folks will translate it to something else or come up with some drawings to share…but it won’t be me 
To keep all of the requirements neat and organized, I will just be editing this post. It’s not the cleanest method but I think it will be better than stringing them out through the project as it unfolds ↩︎
Todo: quantify this with a decibel meter ↩︎
wood is not much of a consideration for me. This is nice because I do not need to consider fine dust particles ↩︎
Conflicts with heat build up but may still be addressable if we’re clever ↩︎
I’ve got some rather silly ideas that necessitate this ↩︎
Since doing this with my current enclosure and soft close drawer slides, I will always try to integrate this ↩︎