Building a workspace

I'm finding myself spending a lot of time rearranging things as I move from a soldering project to an oscilloscope project and back.

The latest change I made is to stack one table on top of the other and mount a 2 Foot long fluorescent light under the top one. This makes for good lighting and I can swap items from the lower table to the upper one fairly quickly.

I think I'll get my for a while using this method. We'll see.

I need to improve the lighting since I'm just using clamp-on 120 VAC floodlights.

I got a bunch of 12 VAC pendant cable lights like these. Brilliant Lighting cable lights.

and I need to figure out how to get them wired up.

They use a GIANT 120 VAC to 12 VAC transformer and some impressive cables in their original form.

i think I'll rewire them for hard-wired 12 VAC, but I've got to figure out how heavy a wire to use.

These are 12 VAC 50 Watt bulbs, so P/(I*E) = 50/12 = more than 4 Amps each.

I'll have to look at cables and see what I can come up with.

Unpacking stuff.

Sheesh. It looks like I took a little bit too much stuff from my house.

It's going to be quite a squeeze to get everything in.

AND, I packed some boxes (like three) by just dumping random things into a box. That's going to be rough getting the stuff sorted out.

I need to buy some plastic bins to store the sorted stuff.

BUT I can see that this is going to work out really well.

Tuesday evening, Maggie and I moved in shelves and tables!

This metal shelf has been used before, and it's a little wonkey.

I really don't care for the way these selves bang together, but it's something I have, so I'll use it.

We did get it together, and it's stable, so it'll be OK.

I do really like the other chrome wire shelf. I don't know where I got it from, but I like it. Strong, stable, and has wheels!

I'm going to have to be very disciplined about how I organize stuff since I don;t really have any extra room to keep junk around.

I'm moving from a suburban basement into an urban 75 square foot space, so only the precious and most useful bits will make it into the permanent lab.

I'll figure out how to add photos of the space next.

We built the shelf unit for use at home last night and I'm impressed.

The unit can be built with the shelf supports in two positions.

One has the shelf sitting on top of the support so items can slide on and off easily.

The other has the shelf sitting in a 2" deep "box" formed by the shelf supports.

I'm planning on assembling the shelves with the front support even with the top of the shelf so I can slide things onto it and the side and back supports making a 2" deep surround so things don't get pushed off the side or back of the shelf.

I'll post photos next week.

One thing I'm not sure I'll like is that the shelves are wire rods instead of solid.

I think I'll need to add some thin plywood or something on some of the shelves to keep things from dropping through.

i do like this shelf and I'll be buying another one for use at AA.

First thing is to build some shelves.

I like those angle-iron with the two mushroom-shaped deals that clip into slots in the angle iron.

However, the ones I've used have pretty sharp edges and are hard to get the lower and upper angle irons to start attached.

Just yesterday, I found a 60" wide by 24" deep shelf of this type that looks much better.

They have wire racks instead of wood.

They have rolled edges which are not sharp and should improve stability.

They have a clip to hold the lower and upper angle together.

$135 is not TOO outrageous.

I got one for home and I think I'll get one for this space.

I'm in space number 59!

I'm thrilled to be so close to the social area and other action-packed spaces.