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Rearrange shop, again

AaronHG

Aluminum
Joined
Mar 2, 2005
Location
So Cal
How many times have you rearranged your (home or pro) shop.
It seems that it's never right. Some of my bigger friends can't even walk through some parts due to feed cranks or stuff.
I know that it's dangerous so I'm allways trying to find the perfect layout. It does seem like it's getting better but I seem to be doing every 6 mos.
I've built loft-like flats from the rafters for the household junk but it's never enough. Does everybody go though this?
 
AaronHG:

There are whole books written about arranging shops. The commercial or professional shop has to save TIME. On the other had, a home or "just a hobby" shop will probably need to conserve SPACE.

Commercial shop design efforts seem to focus on orderly flow of materials and partly-completed workpieces. (And, why wouldn't they, particularly in shops with repetitive work?) That might be a good place to start.

The number of items in a home shop tends to stabilize only when one runs out of space! This tendency must be fought if you are ever going to get anything finished. I'm about to go on an eBay selling rampage.

You also have to "pick your projects", because you can't possibly find time to do all the neat projects that present themselves. As I've aged (now 50 yrs old) the thing that bothers me most isn't not having enough money, though we could all do with more of that, it's not having enough TIME. Now, notice the contrast between the first paragraph and this one......I probably need to treat my tinkering time more professionally.

John Ruth
 
Southbend has written scripture here!!
SO true are the words.....
I'm 45, so I'm learning.

I've re-arranged 3 times in 12 years, with certain
machines coming-and going in between.

I've seen people cut out little cardboard pieces representing machines and arrange them on graph paper. Grizzly has a sorta-hokey computer program for shop layout....

Even better question, how many dollars have you thrown out on projects that 'got old' and you finally junked the parts?
I'm going thru a round of that right now.
It's tough to sort thru 'good' stuff and come to grips with the time/space reality of the
situation.

OTOH, it -could- continue to the rafters, and I've seen some scary examples of that too!

dk
 
John hit it squarely. Material handling and flow is the most important for me.

The press line requires plenty of open space to move 10' to 20' material around with the forklift or overhead crane. If I have to leave 20' bundles of flat bar on the floor it just kills me on moving around.

It is going to be tough going from this shop to a much smaller one in the next few months. I don't know if I'm going to have too much stuff and will have to build a new shop in Nevada.

I would like to keep four of the lathes but reality says only two. How many bench and tool grinders to keep? How many drill presses? How many cabinets? Do I take a punch press? These decisions are tough. I hate to get there and then find out I should have kept this machine or that machine and didn't.

Les
 
After moving 90% of the shop in order to get a mill in the garage about 6 mos. ago. i've got most of the smaller stuff on wheels. That way I can bunch it together until I need it so the layout is somehat flexible depending on if Mama lets me move her car out
. The surface grinder is in a angle frame with wheels and leveling screws for when I use it.


A couple of not so orginal ideas:

I just built a tooling cart for mill accesories out of angle iron and MDF shelves. Kwik Switch holders on top in the open, collets on a sliding shelf, a shelf for clamps, parallels, etc. Phase convertor and big stuff on the bottom shelf. It's amazing how much stuff you can pack in there.
I need to build another one for lathe stuff and get rid of some bulky wooden shelves.

The chop saw,two pedestal grinders, and a belt sander are arranged facing out on a 3 foot square rolling table.

Space is tight, workflow is pretty crappy, but I've got all my toys squeezed in there.


Jon
 
There's never enough money, and never enough space. And the unwritten law is that all horizontal surfaces become filled immediately. Sigh...
 
I'm in a similar place right now. I've finally negotiated my parents into letting me get a TIG welder, and setting up a shop space once and for all (that space is MY space to manage and worry about, so long as it doesn't endanger anyone or the house, meaning I can pack as many machines as I want into it, so long as it's safe). I have a few basic ideas for my layout, which is in a space that'll be about 25'x20' (although i may get the larger space, about 15'x40', which has lower ceilings and a much less level floor) :

-Keep all grinding equip. away from precision surfaces. I'm going to have it on wheels near an exterior door, so that I can simnply roll it outside when I use grinding equip.

-Mills go in corners, which i consider to be the most efficient use of space. Either that or flat against a wall, with shelves or tables or both surroundthing the column.

-Keep machines close together, but always have at least one 3x3 table-like surface (minimum) within no more than 1 step of the operating position of the machine. Good motivation for keeping machine sclose together is that there's fewer problems with managin chips on the ground.

-Keep tooling near machines. No need to cross the shop for an endmill if I can put shelves near the mill in the first place.

-For the 4'x4' surface plate I'm getting, I'm going to permantly mount it next to a sturdy workbench, but it'll have a 1" thick plywood box around it, such that when it's not in use it extends as more table space.

-Keep the welder in a ventialtion route, such that good air circulation can be achieved with as little as 1 fan.

-Have at least a 6x8' open space nearbye (not a problem for me, the car space is nearly always empty in my basement), so that large projects can be worked on in open space.

-Have at least 3' between all tables and machines, so that I don't have to squeeze between spots, a pet peeve of mine.

have at least one good, well lite and clean surface to sit at when drawing and analyzing plans. Keep it close to welder and machines, but far away from each to avoid chips.

If possible have 1 large space open for another machine, likely a mill, lathe, or small shaper. Chances are it'll be taken up by the cincinatti mill.

These shop specs are easy for me to fufill, since I have noone to answer to for production. Also, I have to deal with relatively few machines. My workhorses will be the 9x42" b-port, 10L SB, 14" floor bandsaw, and welder. The large space for another machine will possibly be filled by a sandblasting cabinet, cincinatti mill, or 16" Reed-Prentice lathe.
 
You're doing good! I told you learning to be a space invader would pay off... :D

"-Keep the welder in a ventialtion route, such that good air circulation can be achieved with as little as 1 fan."

I would caution against welding inside a basement, even if you have a solid concrete cube...IMHO there are too many things that can go wrong...agreed that trying to use shielding gas outdoors isn't easy either, but a garage area with partially or fully open door is best if you can minimize flammables.

-Matt
 
My basement is also my garage. I have a garage door that will admit a full sized car, and on the other end two full sized human doors, plus a window. I can get pretty decent cross-ventialtion. Would a sheltered outdoor space be better? I have one of those, however it's closed in by walls on 3 sides, so the ventilation isn't as good (except the "ceiling"--a fiberglass sheet--is about 15' up, so maybe the gasses would vent up to there?. I don't have nearly enough yard space to put it fully outdoors. I kinda assumed that keepingthe welder outside would be bad for it, even with sheltering, but maybe that's not the case. SF is NEVER humid, and there's no snow or super cold or hot times. Is there a type of tarp I could keep over the welder to prevent condensation?

I'm not going to be doing any types of welding except TIG. Not even MIG or stick. I figured a TIG welder would be safe enough with proper precautions. Am i wrong?

I took measurements, my estimates of the dimensions of my options for spaces are shamefully optimistic. One space is 15'x14', and the other one is 12'x28'. I'm going with the larger one, and it looks like I'll have to nix the second mill. Instead I'll add another workbench and a better space for the surface plate. I will have room for a larger lathe in the future, though.
 
The TIG process is the safest fusion-welding method available. No concerns with CO from oxy-fuel combustion. No filler metal being vaporized as with GMAW or SMAW process.

The only time I ventilate any TIG work is when welding galvanized. Grinding away the zinc coating reduces (but doesn't eliminate) vaporizing the zinc, which is toxic.

For GTAW on steel, chrome-moly, stainless, cast-iron, aluminum, I never open the door or turn on the vent fan. You can usually tell if you need to vent - there will be visible smoke or odor from the process. GTAW produces neither.
 
Well, when I TIG 304 stainless I see and smell fumes. I use 308 filler, which, from what i understand, turns into 304 by burning off some element to create a bead which is entirely 304. At work when we do heavy TIG on stainless (which is surprisingly common), we ventilate.

But, from what I'm hearing, are you saying that the fire hazard from exclusive TIG welding is negligible and I don't have anything to worry about, so long as I practice common precautions? Of course there's gonna be a good dry chemical fire extinguisher next to the welding bench at all times.
 
The only neat and tidy workshops are the ones in machinery brouchers - you know, where the only offcuts laying about are stylishly positioned like wood shavings next to a plane in a fine furniture ad, no containers of odd screws, all metal stock is invisible and swarf doesn't exist !

My workshop, like yours is an eternally changing compromise. In heaven things will be better.
 
If you look at my shop pics:
http://www.cartertools.com/picture.html#NSH

You will see I have rearranged the shop a lot in the last 6 years or so. I have even rearranged it since the last pics were taken and have to rearrange again as I'm getting in another Taig CNC mill. If you have a large shop it isn't as big an issue but if your main shop space is 21'x11' then you have to plan (make cad outlines of tools, floor and benches and move around on the computer).

You can never have too many drawers, shelves and toolboxes...
 
There are two possible reasons why they might "heavily ventilate" on "stainless steel" work (bearing in mind stainless steel is not an ANSI metal definition). Austenitic 8/18 is 18% Cr. Cr6+ is very bad metabolically. I have 25 kg of CrO3 from Bayer SA for electroplating at the moment. It is poisonous and carcinogenic (well labelled on the canister). How much oxidation of the Cr occurs during welding depends on how efficient the shielding is. How much ends up in the air depends on ? Cr has a couple of valency states so not all will turn up as CrO3 ("hex chrome"). The issue is sufficiently serious that CrO3 is illegal to supply to private individuals in the UK I understand. But this is Oz - bit more liberal.

I have seen one or two warnings about the chromium uptake risk of doing continuous welding of "stainless" in Australia. That said, older welders are not falling off their perches in droves to my knowledge.

Second point (ventilation) is some places use nasty pickling agents containing Hydrofluoric acid. These tend to be post weld though.

cheers, Tim F
 








 
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