Lab setup: Parts and tools cabinets

Cheap hardware store parts drawers for jellybean parts.

Eg.

Workbenches, I have custom made ones, but McMaster has some decent ones, not too expensive. Holes with those plastic thingies through the top make cords a bit neater. I also have some long metal industrial power bars mounted underneath for stuff that's always plugged in. Sam's Club has a sturdy wood top bench (no drawers etc, though, you'd have to add those) for cheap (around $200 US)... strong enough to hold a 500lb+ milling machine without complaining. I like Kennedy brown cabinets for tools.

I have half a dozen or so Akro-Mills cabinets too, but I'm not that fond of them--they're far harder to find things in and much fiddlier than a big steel drawer, as well as requiring getting out of my chair every time I need something that's just out of reach. Ohmite resistor assortments have reasonably nice plastic drawers, once you dump the 5 crummy resistors per division and replace them with 100 good ones.

Good suggestion about the cords--a chronic problem, that. I have to get some wiring done in my basement anyway, since there's only one outlet circuit down there at the moment, so I might have a couple of turret boxes put in at a convenient height. Most instruments use IEC cords anyway, so I can unplug the box end instead of the outlet end.

There's a Sam's Club near here, so I can have a look at their benches--thanks for the steer. The kitchen cart I'm currently using is definitely for a good time, not a long time.

I also need a long working distance binocular microscope, because being nearly 50, I can't see to solder small stuff anymore. :( I have a couple of sets of soldering glasses (under $40 from Zenni Optical) which are bifocals--+0.75 dioptre reading correction and +2.5 dioptre for close work. (They're quite comfortable except that I'd love to have the bottom part made with a slightly narrower interpupillary distance--eyeballs don't rotate around their pupils, so the IPD changes a bit with distance, which causes some eye strain.) They're not strong enough for doing dead-bug prototyping with SMT devices, though.

I used to have an ancient Zeiss surgical microscope on a floor stand, which I liked very much, but they're >$2k, even though they're 40 years old.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

parts:

workbench:

I keep my tools in one of those mechanic's style cabinets on wheels. Lets me store tools, paint, propane torch, wire, GR-874 hardware, etc Smaller passive parts I keep in regular cheap parts cabinets. ICs and priceless tunnel diodes I keep in ESD cardboard trays.

I guess it all depends on what your qties and purpose are. Me, it's a hobby. It generates no revenue.

I've been very happy with the OM24L that I picked up from

Link is for the 10/30x OM13L; the 20/40x model isn't in stock.

Pros: Price! LED illumination from 3 AA batteries. Easy to shift around the work area. Reasonable optics. Case is included. Pole mount, so adding an extensible arm mount at a later date is possible.

Cons: Large boards will whack into the post. The included charger is a dumb wall-wart (I use a LaCrosse charger so this is no big whoop.) Optics not ground by Nibelungen in magic grottos.

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Rich Webb     Norfolk, VA

One of our local guys uses rolling mechanic's tool chests (craftsmen in his case), mostly thin drawers, and fills each drawer with these:

Each clear top has a semicircle label with part info on it, so he can still see what's in the case.

The crucial flaw! How do you expect to get to enjoy being slaughtered every day in Valhalla if you use Far-Eastern optics? You'll have to spend eternity packed in with million-year-old eggs instead.

Looks like a good bet--I'll investigate further. It's even stereo, not just binocular, which is huge for prototyping. The main compromise seems to be the working distance--it looks like about 3 inches, vs. about a foot for the Zeiss, so I'll have to hunch over some. On the other hand, if I do enough of that sort of work to need a Zeiss, I should be able to afford one. I wonder if a Bogen Magic Arm would be stiff enough to hold it. (I love Magic Arms.)

Thanks

Phil Hobbs

Coin envelopes and baggies in Target stacking plastic bins; $50 will set you right up. Buy the expensive stuff after you're making money. Your customers won't know what you store parts in, but Job 1 is to get customers.

John

who still uses coin envelopes in plastic bins

Again I praise the Mantis for working on small stuff. It has inter-pupil distance adjustment too.

John

If I understand what you want at all, you might want to look at "flat files", "map drawers" "blueprint files" etc either new or at the used office furniture store nearest you. Something like (this will probably wrap):

t-Files.aspx

On your own for either dividers or sub-boxes, but seem less expensive than what you posted in somewhat comparable sizes, and thinner (slightly) drawers.

On the other hand you can still get pretty thin drawers in toolboxes, but I guess 2 inch is about it for the large cabinet size, as opposed to the benchtop type; and they run expensive.

More light (LOTS of it, really bright) as well as stronger non-bifocal and properly IPD adjusted glasses can help with small work, though they are disorienting as heck to keep on your head when not doing the tiny stuff. I go +5 from my standard prescription and work with my nose a few inches from the board. Elevating the board so you are not bent over helps, in that case.

In the lines of "...then what's an empty desk the sign of?" my cluttered one:

Cost - a few hours of my time, some scrap (well, too good to throw away, anyhow) wood, a few screws. The base is one of those 1970's "dorm oak" desks, which was being tossed out in a dorm remodel. The bridge is finally built, though still in need of refinement. I have one power strip mounted to the wall behind, and need to add another, as the HP dinosaurs make annoying hums even when "off" and the Aoyue thinks off means "blue light on airflow and red lights saying 'off'", rather than actually sitting there like a lump doing nothing. I prefer having all the equipment available rather than having to mess with swapping cords about, but I want to be able to kill everything that either makes noise or sucks amps when it's not working, on one switch.

My parts storage is still pretty random - some in boxes in desk drawers, some in file cabinet drawers. If I can't find some good deal at the "used office furniture mart" that will likely be another woodworking project one of these days (insufficient time...) - might choose a standard size such as the "cornell" or "california academy" drawers the insect folk use. I've also been messing about with test tubes or culture tubes as a fairly compact way to organize SMT parts.

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Cats, coffee, chocolate...vices to live by

Quite so. By the grace of God, I'm actually running a positive cash flow overall, though without the comforting illusion of job security--things can change completely in a week. Otherwise I'd be out pounding the pavement instead of gassing on Usenet. ;)

I've long used coin envelopes too--they're great for cut-tape stuff, set screws, and small lenses especially. Dumping over one Akro-Mills cabinet is guaranteed to improve one's swearing ability for a good half hour, and it's happened to me more than once. I'm not proud, just clumsy. Also optics don't survive it as well as electronics.

I have a lot of optical stuff to store, and quite a lot of odd shaped electronic stuff, e.g. power resistors, Mini Circuits stuff, and my collection of discontinued op amps and buffers in TO-3 cans. (LH4009s and LH0063s, anyone? Apex PA84A op amps? LM12s? Got 'em all.)

I work best by scribbling some algebra and a schematic on a sheet of paper, building it on a piece of FR4 attached to the lid of a die-cast aluminum box, making sure it works, and pressing on. That way (at least when I'm on a roll), I can take some fairly complicated mostly-analogue thing all the way to working hardware in a day. Having all my parts right at my fingertips, in plain view, speeds me up amazingly, and besides that's how I've done it for over 20 years now.

I've been ogling those Mantises of yours for awhile too, but they're the same price as the Zeiss scopes, so probably they'll have to wait for a bit more stable financial weather. (I'm not buying the fancy work bench just yet either--that Sam's Club one sounds about right for now, with the one tall Vidmar cabinet next to it to hold stuff.

Next on the wish list is probably a 2 x 4 foot optical breadboard (about $1000) and a few small lasers, followed by an HP 8568b spectrum analyzer (about $2k usually for a nice one) and another synthesizer. (I have to keep my hand in, or I'll get rusty--which would be bad.) By the time I've spent $10k (which will probably take 6 months or a year), I should be pretty comfortable, and assuming the work continues to come in, it'll pay for itself as I go along. I hope I can avoid having to rent office space--that'd run into *real* money. Just now I spend a lot of time working at the public library.

Thanks

Phil Hobbs

I've looked at those, but when you work out the dollars per cubic inch, they come out quite a bit more expensive than the Vidmars, as well as not being gorilla-proof and needing table space.

I'm a big Panavise fan--I often use two at once. A better lamp is on my list too--for years I've used Luxos with 100W tungsten and a circline fluorescent around it--maybe I should switch to white LEDs if the contrast isn't too harsh. The bookshelves are bolted to the wall, so I can hang the lamp from there.

Nice bridge--it really is important to have everything within reach like that. My current setup is an L-shaped array of Ikea bookshelves with a way-too-small kitchen cart shoved up against one side, plus one portable scope on a scope cart. I need some pegs to hang BNC cables from, and a

*whole bunch* more storage. Having something overhanging the bench (like your setup) would be an improvement. I'd also like a 19-inch rack with casters, but that'll have to wait awhile because they're either hideously ugly, floppy, or expensive. You can do a lot with a rack or two clustered around an optical breadboard, and it isn't as ugly as big piles of random instruments. Nor as likely to get damaged by passing family members--there really aren't enough walls in my house for a home lab to be an easy thing to arrange.

I've seen people do that on a small scale. There are racks that fit in drawers and hold test tubes at an angle, which would give pretty good density. Tubes make it easy to tap out a few parts into your hand and scoop up the remainder, which would be nice.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

We were up at the cabin this weekend; I finally got the dryer properly vented through a concrete wall. One of the problems with doing stuff there is not having a proper workbench with a vise and all that. Mo was making fun of us engineers and our obsessions with our workbenches. She simply doesn't understand.

John

Neither does my Mo. However, they put up with us, which is nice.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Where is you at? If you were at one of the IBM east coast facilities (ie New Yawk or Vermont) you might be in striking distance, and I could make you a deal on one (or possibly two, if I can bear to give them both up) really nice 4 post extruded aluminum HP racks I've dragged around for a couple of decades, though you'll be on your own for a caster base for the pair (not hard to either cook up, or buy one for a tablesaw and adapt), since that has been reconfigured into other uses, and there's only one side panel between the two of them (but you could easily make more - just an aluminum sheet of the correct size, if you want them at all). They are great, but I'm a packrat, and have limited space to make use of them, and other (steel, '50s, desk-type) rack setups stashed in my brother's barn in Maine (if the barn doesn't come crashing down on them one of these days.) Being a fan of racks and working a decade or so at a university where the better funded labs tossed out perfectly good "old" racks when they got new stuff, I glommed onto a few.

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Cats, coffee, chocolate...vices to live by

I'm in the northern suburbs of NYC. Are they the 7-foot ones, or something smaller? My basement ceilings are about 7 foot 4. Of course if they're extruded, I could take off the top, saw ten inches or so out of the uprights, and put the top on again. Either way, I'd be interested.

Thanks

Phil Hobbs

I just purchased some sheets of melamine board and used angle brackets bolted into wall studs for sincere strength and rock solid stability.

This is a poor photo of my setup that I took a while back:

(A) is a top shelf is placed directly against the wall (no gap where loose parts or cables might fall through.) I use it to hold boxes of less used parts and tools. (B) is the electronic instrument shelf. It is gapped from the wall, leaving a couple of inches room for cords and cables to drop down behind for power. (C) is is my main workbench table top. It's wider than (A) or (B) for obvious reasons. Against the back, there is one of those 8' long plug things that I got from Home Depot, for power plugs from the above shelf. Some vises are built into the table top over near the front, right side in the picture. (D) is a small shelf under the workbench area that holds a few even less used items. Plus, when sleeping under the table (you can see the bed as (E) -- very important for those 18 hour days), it makes a great place for books I might want to read while putting myself to sleep.

The point here is that the cost for all of the shelves and brackets was less than $100 and it didn't take all that long to install, either. However, I own my home, too, so drilling and screwing in brackets was a decision I could make. It doesn't move, which is both an advantage and a disadvantage. I happened to know exactly which room and wall it would be for a very long time, in advance, so the decision here was fine.

I'm in the process of digging a foundation (I do ALL of the labor and hire none of it) and will pour the cement in a few weeks, setting in the ufer ground at the time and bringing over power through underground conduit with a ground well in between. It'll be a 16x12, two story with gambrel roof. This will be the new site and I'll probably re-purpose the existing shelf system, then.

Jon

Phil Hobbs wrote: I have a

Also, your vergence and accommodation innervation are tied together; when your eyes converge on an imaginary point, they automatically focus for that distance too, which will be the wrong distance if you're using lenses.

That's fixed with "prism", which you'll find in OptiVisor magnifying headsets. They're the best I've found.

Or for a dollar, a hacksaw, and some epoxy you could just hack some dollar store reading glasses.

Cheers, James Arthur

The power multiplier of being able to reach for--and get--the thing you need, when you need it, uninterrupted, is significant.

Cheers, James Arthur

The Zenni ones are excellent, but there's no way to make the upper and lower parts have different IPDs.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal
ElectroOptical Innovations
55 Orchard Rd
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510
845-480-2058
hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net