> My amount of test equipment has outgrown my workbench setup, so I need to
> look at setting up or building a bench. I've got the current bench so
> crowded with gear it's hard to work already, plus I've got a lot of test
> gear that isn't on the bench and should be. i'd love to get the laptop a
> spot on the bench too (lots of room it would take up) So....
>
> I went googling in search of pictures of good bench setups. I'm looking
for
> ideas on the best way to stuff as much gear as possible onto it, while
> keeping it usable and neat. Does anyone have any links to different ideas
> for workbench setup? I have a sneaky suspicion that if I just build one
> myself I'll find that later "oh WHY did I put the outlet strip THERE?". I
> didn't find much of anything googling, but was hoping to draw on
experience
> of others for some ideas in building a bench from scratch. So far I've
used
> those "set on top of a desk premade lettershelfs". They let you put rows
of
> test equipment close with the faces all well accessible. But haven't found
> the best place to put the power strips.
>
> If anyone has links to pictures of bench setups, or advice of things to
> watch out for when putting one together, I'd like to hear them!
>
> Jay West
>
I've got a solution that I've been real happy with here. Behind my 'bench'
is a set of those heavy plastic 4x2 ft shelves from Home Depot. The
longways shelf at eye-level has my sope, logic anaylzer and old nixie
frequency counter and a little Unibus cpu. Eye-level shelf[-1] has a few
PSes with leads ready to jump out and also is storing my Tek 4051 junk
hiding there. My 'bench' juts out from about this level. Higher and lower
shelves back there now offer other convenient storage and I've daisy chained
powerstrips up the frame of the shelves to provide power whereever needed.
My bench from the ground up is a piano stand metal X frame supporting a
floating 5ft plywood bench with a groundable static mat.on top of that..
That still gives me space underneath the bench which two big book piles now
occupy too. Have a few Heath electronic trainers, other breadboards, a
few VOM and some morphable area on the bench. Been looking for the serial
cable for a Psion-5 to use as my laptop on the bench. Then recently,
another shelf grew on top of the bench letting me kinda computationaly
stack-push my last State while I play with a few new things( swtpc/cosmac).
But even now the bench is wierdly accessable underneath. I can also
carefuly lift the entire now two level bench with everything on it and shift
it left or right by a foot or so to gain access to a more seldomly used isle
or desk on the right
.
Ands that all in front of the 'bench seat'. And with more nearby
shelves/tables/piles Other Stuff, a desked NeXT, a 4 pc computer network,
and evem a small sleeper also fit neatly all in that small bedroom with the
electronics bench. Everythings accessable maybe with minor effort. Room
occupancy: 3 people recently tested, and over 100 systems (okay, alota
sbc's).
Kinda feels like your inside a 3D Core back there. FUN.
Check out:
http://bellsouthpwp.net/d/o/dogas/U1800a.jpg
The electronics bench starts at the bottom of the picture with the brown
antistatic bench mat.
;)
- Mike: dogas_at_bellsouth.net
>
Received on Mon Mar 29 2004 - 08:42:26 BST
