A few weeks ago i posted about an isolation table that I made out of oak and some isolation feet.  The table was solid oak at 4 inches thick and around 27lbs, turned out incredibly well, but the feet I made were of course redneck versions. So today I decided to do a new project.  

The first photo shows version 1. It was my “redneck engineering” solution: a heavy oak isolation block sitting on four homemade risers/feet. It did what I wanted mechanically, but visually, let’s just say function definitely came before form.

So I decided to rebuild the support system rather than change the basic concept.

I made a separate plywood base and routed four individual pockets for the isolation feet. The oak block still rests directly on the four isolators  it never touches the plywood base. The plywood is really just a framework for locating and controlling the isolation system.

The part I spent the most time on is what you can see inside each pocket. Rather than rigidly mounting the feet, I used multiple elastic suspension bands arranged radially around each isolator. The bands keep each foot centered and laterally controlled while still allowing it to move and do its job. In other words, I wanted the isolators contained, but I didn't want to defeat their compliance by hard-mounting them to the base.

So mechanically the stack is:

Rack → isolation base → four independently suspended isolation feet → 27-lb oak mass platform → turntable.

The routed pockets also let most of the isolation hardware disappear into the base, so I kept the same basic mass-and-decoupling approach while dramatically cleaning up the appearance and lowering the profile.

There was a surprising amount of measuring, routing, fitting and experimenting involved just to make four feet behave themselves. 😂 But that's half the fun of building this stuff.

Version 1 proved the idea. Version 2 makes it look like I meant to do it.

Isolation table and suspension isolation. Hand crafted.