The Ideal RepRap Home Workshop (Pictures Of Your RepRap Workspaces!)

Hi All,

I am moving from Guam (a tiny island in the Middle West of the Pacific Ocean) to beautiful California.

My Home Workshop (and wife and children ) are coming with me!



Since I will be re-building my workshop, I wanted to draw inspiration from you fine gentlemen on: What "goes into" the "ideal" home RepRap workshop?

While we are at it, why not post a pic of your workshop for the world to see first hand? Above: Me with a stupid grin in my garage

What kind of layout, tools, equipment etc. do you find are essential to the RepRap...ing experience?

*What heavy power tools (if any) do you personally find important?
-> The heaviest thing in my arsenal is a fairly heavy duty drill press. I have no power saws/cutters yet any recommendations?

*What dainty/delicate hand tools have you fallen in love with?
-> Tweezers a pair of digital calipers and a Staret Dial gauge are my go-to small items.

*What kind of electronics paraphernalia are you armed with? Any special tools for cleaning up and covering messy wires?
->Soldering Iron, a modest multi-meter, heat shrink rap, and all sorts of R/C plane and car connectors/wires.

*What is your Ideal Layout? What is your location relationship between where tools, electronics, computers, and oily/sticky things go?
->I pretty much just "made do" with the workbench in may garage. I would like to do better than that this time, and come up with a nice cohesive setup using your suggestions!

Thanks for your thoughts, and hopefully a picture of your workshop!

Nice setup you've got, I'm lookin forward to see pictures of your new place!

> *What heavy power tools (if any) do you personally
> find important?

The single most used power tool I own is my Bosch GSR 10,8-2-li hand drill. It's super powerful, and with a high quality set of drill bits, it handles every job I throw at it with ease. It's pretty expensive though, but for me it's been worth every penny, and it'll last years, hopefully.

A jigsaw is great for cutting dibond, wood and acrylic, just make sure you have the correct blade.

I don't use my cheap small drill press much, but it's good for holes you need to be straight for tapping.

I also like my triton steel cutter very much. A bit on the expensive side to get one only for RepRap, but I got one cheap and it's extremely convenient.

Last but not least is my stationary belt sander, which makes it a breeze to round off edges on threaded rods, file down bolts that's just a few mm too long, and smooth out a flat surface on printed objects.

I also have a compressor I mostly use for air and a mitre saw, but for RepRap purposes a jigsaw is often enough. Though for Mendel90, I could need a table saw of some sort.

> *What dainty/delicate hand tools have you fallen
> in love with?

I'll second both tweezers and digital calipers. I use my calipers (the cheapest ones you can find) absolutely all the time.

I also love my needle nose pliers, and a decent set of wire cutters.

Since I don't use socket head machine screws, but the cheaper hex head variants, I like to use a pipe attachment for my drill or screwdriver when assembling printers.

Apart from a good soldering iron (mine died recently ), my favourite soldering equipment is this kind of tip cleaner and a Knipex "Super Knips" side cutter. The cutter was far, far too expensive, but it's so incredible good at cleaning up the back side of a through hole PCB.

> *What kind of electronics paraphernalia are you
> armed with? Any special tools for cleaning up and
> covering messy wires?

I've got one of the excellent crimping tools from mdpc-x, which is great when assembling the molex/dupont connectors for the electronics.

For high-current connections and screw terminals, I like to use ferrules as they makes the ends so much cleaner. I have a basic crimping tool that works fine, but I usually like to solder them as well. I use them all the time, and recently added ferrules to all the speaker wires on my stereo.

I also have to mention my wire stripper. Many people frown upon it, and I have to admit it has its limits, but when you learn them; you'd be hard pressed to strip wires faster and cleaner than with this tool.

There's both close-to-stupid-expensive tools as well as the cheapest tools you can find, in my collection. When I buy a tool for the first time I usually go for the cheapest version. If I wear it out and found I really liked it, I cash out for a better tool. It's a balance act, but in total I find the cheap tools that hold up, save in the price of cheap tools that break. Is it silly to spend $100 on a dormer drill bit set? Some would say so, but growing up with my dads shoebox of broken drill bits I thought making a hole was supposed to be difficult and take a long time, then I got myself the dormer set. Is it silly to spend $300 on a triton steel cutter, uhm ... that one's a bit hard to defend.

> *What is your Ideal Layout? What is your location
> relationship between where tools, electronics,
> computers, and oily/sticky things go?
> ->I pretty much just "made do" with the workbench
> in may garage. I would like to do better than
> that this time, and come up with a nice cohesive
> setup using your suggestions!

The most important thing I've learnt is that power tools make a lot of dust. So I now use the basement or take the machines outdoors, and thus keep my main RepRap+electronics room a clean room. (Not tidy though).

I used to work at an optician, and our workshop/back room was laid out much like a kitchen, with plenty of cupboards and many metres of table space. It worked very well, and I'm going for the same thing in my new workshop.

My main focus is having thing stored away so they don't get to collect dust, nor clutter up the workspace. As few open shelves as possible and things that are not in a cupboard is stored in a transparent plastic box. Ideally every little thing needs its own place, especially important for tools so you know where to find them. I'll have a dedicated soldering area where I can keep my special tools, and keep it tidy. I might also move working printers out of the workshop and to my computer room (yes, I have a lot of rooms), but it tend to move tools around from place to place so it's not a perfect solution, unless you buy new tools to have by the printers.

But it's only plans, yet. I'll have to find an second hand kitchen and decide on plates for the tables before I can continue. Right now I only have a few temporary shelves, and my printers and computers are spread around the house, so not much to take a picture of, but I'll make sure to upload a picture when I've got a few things in place.

I do have a picture from my basement, though the machines are only scattered on the floor:

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-Nudel
Blog with RepRap Comic

You the man Nudel,

Thanks for your thoughts!

I am now a bid mdpc-x fan! I am going to get a bunch of their sleeving to keep my wires clean!

I like your thoughts on a separate soldering stations. And a semi-clean room/area for the printers to live. Though in my case the clean area might just end up the opposite side of a garage

I have the same wire strippers and love them! They work like a charm

I also know what you mean about getting the "better drill-bits." It always sucks to be bitten by an inferior tool!

Best of luck on your new workshop setup!

Here is the look of my new workshop

I just came from Guam for a small exercise...You might be the only RepRapper there! I didn't see any big hardware or electronics stores there so you may have to pay extra shipping for everything. I'm going back next month, look me up. I'd like to see how others build their nest.

BTW the humidity there is off the charts, protect your filament!

This is the half of my workshop that my repraps have taken over. The other half has all the dirty stuff like the MIG welder and grinders etc.
I have one V2 Prusa printing (yellow), one V2 Prusa almost completed, one Mendel max under construction (out of the picture) and the Open Beam Prism I am building in the middle.


Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/04/2012 04:19AM by Wired1.

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Richmond, New Zealand
Thingiverse ~ YouTube

This was taken about 2 minutes before she stood up on the part of the box top that was overhanging the table and flipped off the table. The box top was a good idea up until then because it kept her from sleeping on my keyboard. You can see the ramps 1.4 by her head.

Wired1 Wrote:
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> This is the half of my workshop that my repraps
> have taken over. The other half has all the dirty
> stuff like the MIG welder and grinders etc.
> I have one V2 Prusa printing (yellow), one V2
> Prusa almost completed, one Mendel max under
> construction (out of the picture) and the Open
> Beam Prism I am building in the middle.
> [i825.photobucket.com]
> 1/Reprap%203D%20printer/Workshop2800x600.jpg

Cool workshop!

I just saw and "liked" your open beam printer on Thingiverse. It looks nice