After seeing other blog posts about people’s workshops, I thought I should add a post about our small home workshop which is in the loft of our terrace home.
The loft space is 4.1m long, 3.2m wide at its widest point and 2m high in the middle.
At one end of the room are storage trays covering the wall with hundreds of trays of resistors, capacitors, semiconductors, LEDs, fixing hardware and lots of other small parts.
Each side of the loft space has shelves which have more storage under each one with storage trays and boxes full of everything from computer parts to camping equipment.
One side has our Pick and Place machine with drill and milling bit drawer under the shelf and the other side has an N gauge model of the Swanage steam railway with a protective lid over to keep the dusk out and lots of odds and ends currently stored on top!
At the far end of the workshop is the main workbench which has small hand tools across the back wall on storage clips, a central work area with Metcal soldering irons and a fume extraction system. The left side has all our main test equipment including a 60MHz 2Ch Oscilloscope, function generators, frequency counters, various multimeters and variable power supply. There is also a Shuttle PC which is used for the development of PIC’s and Arduino.
Under this bench is our SMD oven in a sealed box with an air vent which extracts the fumes outside and also an OKI air filter to use when soldering on the bench. On either side are more storage boxes with old projects and bits of wire and connectors.
Above this shelf is another storage shelf which has a hot air SMT rework station, rolls of tape, solder and heat shrink in different sizes.
Next to the access trap hatch/ladder is the CNC mill which is run using Mach 3 on an old Dell PC and small hobby lathe.
There isn’t any spare space in the loft now after the addition of our solar hot water system earlier this year with the new header tank, controller and pump systems being fitted in the corner next to the access trap hatch/ladder.
Neil Thompson
You need a bigger workshop Brian before your bring the house down. Mind you the view is amazing.
Carceology
What brand/model reflow oven is that? I've been searching for one for a while now and haven't found anything compact enough for the desktop but still useful enough for small production.
Brian
It is a CIF FT-02 Oven, available from RS, Farnell or http://www.pmtech.co.uk/essemtec-ro06-plus-lead-free-batch-oven-1.html who ours came from after the first one from Farnell arrived damaged.
Artur
there is no exit, how do you get out?!)
Brian
The steps up into the loft are behind the milling machine