80.20 designs?

[LBReefer]

I am thinking about going with 8020 for my next tank stand and I could use some advice. I have not worked with this stuff and would love to crib off of someone else's notes. I would be even more excited to steal someone else's parts list! I am also curious about how to nicely attach the skin to the tank. I have used magnets on my tanks where I used the rocket design, but they have always looked a little rough.

Thank you in advance!

- LBR

 

[RobB'z Reef]

Are you committed to using the name brand or are you just looking to do an extruded aluminum stand in general? There are a plethora of vendors out there offering extruded aluminum parts and services. The 80/20 website is quite unfriendly if you're unfamiliar with the materials and/or structural design and they often don't end up being the low cost provider, but it's still possible. I did my own design in Autodesk fusion and then let framingtech. Com figure out the connections. I could have, but it wasn't worth my time. What size tank are you building for? The larger the tank the less forgiving it can be, but for tanks under 100 gallons (I'm generalizing here) the weight for the materials used isn't so bad. I did one for a 180 and it turned out amazing.

 

[LBReefer]

I'm very flexible and definitely not tied to a brand. I'm looking to support a 120.

 

[RobB'z Reef]

A few that I'm aware of are:

us.misumi. They have some preconfigured stands based on standard tank sizes.

FramingTech. They also have prefigured sizes, far more than misumi and are super good at dealing with custom orders, quick turn around as well.

T-Nutz, low prices can configure individual pieces, but depending on your design complexity you may have to contact them directly.

Most offer anodizing and powder coating services, but you'll see your stand prices soar outside of clear or black.

I think for your tank size you have a lot of latitude for design. 1 1/2" or 40mm square tubing should suffice.

 

[theatrus]

This is very much for a smaller tank, and still unfinished (as in I didn't set it up yet, it sits empty, oops), but this was my process for a 20g. Its way way overbuilt for a 20g, but being able to configure sections internally was huge for me:

Nano Build - Dinosaur to Phoenix, a new 22G Long mini build

Current design snapshot: Hi! I've been staring at this for far too long Its a poorly neglected planted tank - it overgrows to the point where its just green against the glass, and then I go do a horrific pruning job ripping out a metric ton of java ferns. The above tank state is just...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[LBReefer]

Thank you very much for this. At the end of the day, I couldn't justify the extra expense for doing this versus buying a custom stand from my LFS.