New Home Shop - Side Hustle

[MtnBiker]

Everlast 235DPi if you are curious. Pretty nice machine so far. The kid bought this before dad started throwing money at the side hustle.

 

[MtnBiker]

Very nice shop...How have you addressed the grit issue from grinding. Would be a shame to have it get into that nice new mill and everything else.

Found a deal on a Grizzly 0798 metalworking downdraft table. Local, new in box. Saved me a lot. I think this will do the trick. We'll probably fab up a rear apron thingy like the expensive ones use. But at 3,500 cfm is seems to work really well.

 

[7milesup]

Have you started planning the addition on the garage yet? You are filling that space up faster than most of can blink.

 

[MtnBiker]

Have you started planning the addition on the garage yet? You are filling that space up faster than most of can blink.

Casters. That's the plan. More casters.

Update 1/30/2121...

Finished fabricating the tube frame and welded the casters on. Love having that flexibility.

 

[7milesup]

Casters. That's the plan. More casters.

Same plan I am on....

 

[MtnBiker]

New toy. Didn't want to make room for a large shear / brake until we get some more experience and a larger shop. Want to keep the shop as organized and modular as possible. I fab'd up a base for the 12" shear that will work with the Siegmund fixturing pins. With minimal hand-tightening these create a very solid connection so in just seconds we're ready for sheet metal work. We'll fab up similar mounts when we get tube benders (and whatever else we grow into). Next up will be a table/fence for the shear that we can mount the same way.

This was a cool little project on the mill. As much as the mill is a complement to our business, I think machining will be a life-long hobby of mine.

 

[General Zod]

Nice. I like a lot of the Klutch brand items from Northern Tool.

 

[MtnBiker]

Here is a cool little project - the kid replaced a rotting wooden front patio gate with this. MIG worked only okay (even though we like the rather rough-hewn look of this metal version). Frame is weathering steel with a 22 ga 6" square patchwork panel. Going to replace a large swinging back-yard gate with the same style in 12" squares and 20 ga.

Will be picking up a TIG welder in a month or two. Would have worked better. Still a fun little project using that sweet bench shear.

 

[MtnBiker]

It's less complicated than you think. If you can find the room, about 4'x4', you might look into the Langmuir Crossfire Pro. It doesn't seem that the cost would be an issue, but it's less than $3000 with all the options. The water table knocks down the fumes, so your extractor would probably be adequate unless your garage is air-tight. Wastewater disposal shouldn't be an issue either, unless your city has a strict pre-treatment program (and you don't want them to know what you're doing in there). The table holds about 15 gallons I think, and quite a few of the owners have posted modifications to conserve water and filter out the metal; the new table fluids are mostly glycol based (no hydrogen gas), and DIY fluid is usually Borax based, once it's filtered, you just need to adjust the pH before disposing in the municipal sewer system. (Wastewater rules are a part of my job.) I would suggest using one of the pink colored fluids though, since it looks like soap, and the others look like antifreeze or porta potty water if they were to escape down your driveway. The Crossfire Pro has been in the wild for about a year now, and there are plenty of YouTube videos of the Pro and the Original in use in small garages and workshops - now that I think about it, I might be the only person that's got an exhaust stack installed.

I'm building one in my garage now, although my garage is far from clean and organized like yours (I still don't know where I'm going to put the Bridgeport). And now my cheapo welding table seems...inadequate.

We had originally decided against plasma cutting. But hiring someone else proved awful (folks wanted retail money). We reconsidered and this is where we are now:



As for managing the water table - we have a very efficient filter/drain that exits the garage and goes into a leach line in the yard. We dump after cutting (we're weekend warriors and it doesn't make sense to humidify the shop all week). The Hypertherm Powermax 85 has been brilliant. That's 3/4" plate that we've been cutting. Also allows us to fill through the drains by turning the ball valve - so no splashing.



This is an art piece we did recently. Getting pretty good resolution.

 

[MtnBiker]

That's not a shop. That's a fully-functional machinist's art gallery. Beautiful work!

Regards

We finally got that lathe - said we weren't worthy of praise until we had one.

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