My Workshop

[Hellmut1956]

Hi everybody. I have presented so far my report on building the sailboat model Carina and the project related to it dealing with the electronics. I hope I choose the right place to present to you how, over many years my workshop has been developing in parallel to my working on the other sub-projects I have been reporting. The reasons for the delays in continuing reporting work on the other 2 sub-projects is driven partly by my health problems and partly because I have been hitting new fields to study, experiment and reflect over the opportunities they offer for my original project of the sailboat model Carina.

 

Early in the 2000's my family and myself lived in a different house and I did work on my project of the first generation, the "Sabrina". My then very young kids made a whole in the hull and so I decided to build something as a combination of "hangar" for my model to have it protected and a workbench. As the kids grew our house got too small and so we relocated to another house where I took ownership of the bigger of the 2 cellar rooms and decided to make it my workshop. That how all of this started.

 

 

 

 

 

I have tried To present in this pictures what is my so called "Old Workbench" which I did rebuild in the room in the cellar. A s the space available on that wall was a bit wider than the room available earlier I did expand it creating additional space on the working surface of my workbench and additional stack of drawers on the right side. What this 4 pictures make evident is my challenge to get an order into the stuff that I had been acquiring for over a decade. It was so that it was more feasible to buy something new instead of trying to find it, which I knew I already owned! So one of the goals of this improved version of my old workbench was to create places where I could store in an organized fashion that stuff I owned. Forced to do so was that after not being able to get a job again and more urgent as my health problems made my economic resources shrink so buying is an option to be taken only as a last resort.

 

As you can see on the first and second picture my sailboat hull was placed in my "hangar and when closed it was protected. In my third picture you can see how I did build a shelve on the top my the working surface of my workbench where 144 assortment boxes could be placed and below I was able to place the 4 shelves I owned for assortments having the space to even add 36 spaces for more assortment boxes! You can even see in 3 of the 4 pictures the challenge I am still facing today. The working surface of the workbench shows the chaos of stuff on it making serious work on the workbench only possible when moving that stuff to the floor of my workbench. Moving the chaos from one spot to another!

 

But starting to place my stuff into the assortment boxes made an additional problem visible! Where have I placed what? Most of the assortment boxes are transparent and on some of them I did place stickers that described what was in them! So now, not looking in the chaotically placed stuff I started to be scanning the boxes to find what I was looking for. Having more than 200 assortment boxes This takes a lot of time every time I have to go through the exercise.  But to aggravate the thing even further, I do not always return the assortment boxes to their place, so starting to look for a certain assortment box in the remaining chaos made the process even harder!  Finally there is an even worse fact. When ever I am looking for something I get blind in seeing it. Let me give you an example! If I was looking for a flat screwdriver all I was able to find where  cross screwdrivers. And viceversa! And I have a similar problem for all other kind of stuff!

 

 

This is one of the explanations why I worked on my hull placing it on top of a table on wheels. But even here you see how you find stuff all over my workshop! When I started to deal with electronics as part of my project of the "Carina" I build myself a small expansion to my workbench being my electronic lab:

 

 

Also here you see that my challenge to get chaos under control was defeated by the ability of the chaos  to take control over new spaces I was creating. The working surface is my prove! By the way, while up to then I was trying to get the chaos under control dealing with parts related to none electronics activities, electronic stuff has the ability to grow even faster. The variety of parts in electronics is even bigger that that of the other kind. Just think about the number of values resistors can have and as a multiplication all those values exist  for different kind of power, watts and you have those for through whole and for surface mounting. Same is true for capacitors and so on!

 

As I also made my own electronic boards I needed the infrastructure to make electronic circuitry boards myself. I am planning to have on my sailboat deck light sources and to be able to control the intensity from my RC transmitter.

 

 

 

So using a facial tanner I purchased via eBay for just a few USD I could use transparencies created via a graphics program and printed with my inkjet printer on a foil I could pass the circuitry to the photo sensitive surface of a board. On this picture you see how I could create 18 small boards for surface mounted LED devices.

 

 

Here you see the result.

[Hellmut1956]

Progressing in my work on the building from scratch of the sailboat model Carina I faced challenges that made me acquire equipment. So I purchased a milling and a lathe. So I had to create the places where that equipment could be placed. Lets start with the lathe.

 

 

A piece of furniture I originally created to place a printer for a office I did operate for some time, it then was modified to host 3 servers I used in the same company. You can see the circular opening on the "floor". This was where air was pulled out of the space where the servers where placed. Equivalent opening are on the rear wall, just below what is on this picture the surface on which I have placed my lathe. A old piece power supply was used to operate the fans. As the weight of the lathe required to make the furniture more stable I build into it a frame made out of steel rod. This way the furniture was able to carry the weight of the lathe while being stable enough to handle the vibrations of the lathe. As working with a lathe you make wooden or metal chips and that oil will be spread around the lathe I did use a special piece of would that is resistant against chemical and mechanical stress. This way cleaning the working space around the lathe could be done properly.

 

 

From my days at the university I had a cabinet on wheels that now I used to place the milling machine on top. This offered the advantage that I could move the milling machine so that that was always a way to have enough space available around it to take any kind of stuff I was working on. The reason I got finally the incentive to purchase the milling machine was that I was facing a challenge building the light sources for the deck of my model sailboat.

 

 

 

I had to be able to build the bodies of the light sources any time in the future and that they had to be exact replicas of the original ones. Also all light sources, as shown on the drawing above had to have identical physical dimensions so that any light source could be installed in any of the places I planned to use them. This device consisting of an aluminium plate were the brass rods where mounted and it was guarantied that the screw holes on both sides of the light bodies where always matching. This demanded a degree of precision I was not able to achieve using a normal drilling machine mounted on a structure.

 

 

 

In this 2 picture you can see that the fraise with its coordinate drilling table made it possible to place the bore holes so exactly on the brass rods and the aluminium plate that after cutting the threads M3 into both the brass rods and the aluminium plate screws did enter both threads properly. Having a fraise opens the appetite to use it extensively! Alling in love to pursue any aspect of the works I do encounter on my project for the sailboat Carina I also did work to have a proper device to make available the different electrical tensions delivered by using a modified PC power supply and a tension doubling device able to deliver up to 10 A at 24 VDC form the 12 VDC of the power supply. I used a 600 W PC power supply to ensure enough capacity to face even the most challenging uses I might encounter later.

 

 

I will present the details to the building of this power rail later when I present how I did expand this electronic lab into a much more sophisticated one. Here I will repeat what I often write. My goal, my objective in working on building the model boat Carina from scratch as presented here in this forum is not to have a boat to navigate, but to have a source that motivates me to keep my brain working, my days organized and well used, to keep a positive mood and to learn topics that keep fascinating me. I am well aware of, as none of my kids share my love and obsession of working on modelling projects, when I leave this life all of the stuff is going to be thrown to the garbage and hopefully some sold to people that are interested, like in the lathe of the fraise and its accessories. There even is a high probability that we will not be able to continue living in this house once my wife cannot work anymore. In this case I hopefully, if not died by then, I can continue working on the electronics of this project.

 

Next to the lathe, to its right side I have my office:

 

 

From this desk I can go into the Internet, I can play computer games and I can have contact with forums in the fields of naval modelling, electronics and participate in course offerings from universities for fields where I can gain the knowledge that has either eroded since the times I was at the university, or areas I can expand my knowledge. MOOC are those offering called and places like OCW from MIT, Coursera, edx and other portals do offer them for free. What will later become of importance is that from this desk I can work and develop my electronics and the associated software.

[KeithAug]

Hellmut,

 

An interesting description of your workshop. I hope you get many years of pleasure out of it and that over the years your children come to value what you make.

[Hellmut1956]

The next big step in my work on my workshop started while I was recovering from my first stroke! Thanks to my activities in naval modelling I got to meet what is now a good friend I do owe a lot, Jorge. I was strongly limited in my activities and he came to visit me and decided to help me to get more order into my workshop! This started with a simple actions that shows how a person who is organized can make a big difference! He achieved a lot just by placing the many wood parts I have in my inventory in a single place to have it organized:

 

 

The impact was already major! Next topic he addressed was to organize my workshop in such a way that all activities prone to generate dust and dirt has to be placed in one half of the workshop room, a division to be made between this 2 parts of the workshop. As the milling machine and the lathe where in the same side of the room as my office desk it was evident that that part where the old workbench was had to become the dirty part of the workshop. He then offered me to build a second workbench to place the lathe and the fraise on it! His willingness to offer me to build this workbench got my tendency for perfection in place and so, in combination with the skills of Jorge the new workbench came to life:

 

 

Different from the way I build my first workbench, with this one we started from the beginning building a stell structure using the same steel rods, 40x40 mm and with 3 mm thickness. To protect the floor the structure was placed on wooden sheets and the 2 machines where placed on thick wooden place made out of the same material used to protect the furniture on which the lathe had been. Focus was given to ensure my position when operating the lathe was optimal and ensuring I had the space to place rods of any length in the lathe for working on them. The other issue to take care of, was to place the milling machine at such a place my working with it would not limit the physical dimensions of the piece I would be working on. So both requirements where solved properly and the new workbench was placed at the opposite side of this "half cellar room from my old workbench. You happen to see the grip of one of its drawers. And you could see what I wrote earlier. Chaos expands into any additional space available!

 

 

Here you can appreciate my new workbench, now with all its surfaces covered with the same material I had originally used around the old place my lathe was. I build ideal lightning around the placement for both machines and plenty of power outlets, most not visible because hidden behind de fraise. But you can also appreciate an accessory I did purchase for my milling machine. A rotational desk. Mounted on top of the coordinate table I was no able to work having the additional freedom of moving the part by 360°. This way I build my cable drum for the stepper motors that will play the role of a winch in my model sailboat.

 

 

 

On this picture you can see the raw construction of one of my drums, where I have used the wrong material at its shaft. I learned, that for proper longevity and proper long term operation precision the shaft would require a stell cover, while its counterpart could be made using brass. You can also see the fake batteries I build using the milling machine. They have exactly the same physical dimensions and weight of the real batteries, LiFePO4, 16 Ah. Tying to make the steel cover of the shaft my milling machine was damaged resulting in its milling had to loose its proper alignment and starting to vibrate heavily when used. As the further work on the drum requires high precision I had to stop working on them until one day I can repair my milling machine. This will happen when finally one day have so much order on both workbenches that I can orderly work on fixing the problem.

 

 

Now, that thanks to Jorge both my milling machine and my lathe had been relocated, here a picture about how the former place of the lathe looked like. I decided to move my electronics lab from its former location next to the old workbench to this place! The hull was moved into its place in the hangar in the old workbench.

 

 

Starting from the familiar chaos in my workshop I prepared the furniture around which my "full blow electronic laboratory would be build:

 

 

Does this not look beautiful compared to the earlier pictures? So first thing I started to do was moving the power rail from the old place to its future place:

 

 

 

This module is placed upside-down to focus on preparing it for its new placement.

 

Additionally I placed the biggest possible number of power outlets next to it.

 

 

 

Here you can see the placement of the 600 W PC power supply and behind it the doubler for the 12 VDC to 24 VDC.

 

 

Here you can see my "first generation power Panel. The reasons to make it where the need to have a switch to turn the power supply to the electronic components, So now you can feed any of the tensions from the power rail to one of the green female connectors and feed the electronic component taking the tension selected from the corresponding yellow female connector. Additionally or alternately you can ffed your circuits by using the 5 screwable connectors you can see here as black row of connectors. The ground or negative pole of this DC power sources is common to all tensions and is offered with the 10 screwable connectors on the right side. Additionally, extra for charging equipment for batteries I build the 2 large connectors  on the right side. You can feed the power supply from the power rail using those 2 female connectors.

 

Here you see my setup for my first experiments working with stepper motors. Over a decade using my old workbench its wooden structure started its end of life. So I decided to replace and/or add to the wooden rods steel rods. The work on the old workbench has not yet been finalized. But my decision to improve its structure by adding or replacing wooden by stell rods let me decide to add 2 levels of drawers to my electronic workbench.

 

 

So you can appreciate now how each drawer level is build by mounting 2 steel rods and placing a wooden sheet on top of it. The drawers will then slide over it.

 

Here still without the set of self build grips imitating some from Ikea.

 

So, here the picture shows my electronics workbench with the first generation power panel mounted on the top of the left side wall of the bench. What proved to be a problem was that when connecting the power rail to the power panel and the circuits boards used for the experiments it looked like a spider web! So many cables hanging around that according to Murphys Law the probability of doing something wrong was very high. So I decided to build a second generation power panel.

 

 

Here you can appreciate how my electronics workbench looks like today. On the left, now directly on the bench working surface the electronic power panel. The color of the stickers and the female connectors have the colors as defined for the atx power supplies for PCs! In the middle in the front is a unit I have build to have good access to RaspBerry Pi boards, each with its own switch and associated red LED to indicate ON or OFF. Also the benefit of this unit is that I just have to take a wire for the positives and ground to connect to the power panel.  To the right of the power panel you have what the next picture shows:

 

The power rail of the lab and the power panel are connected by wires that go hidden from one place to the other. You can see the colored wires coming from the top and screwed to a first row of screwable connectors. Between this row and the next as for now I have placed wires that connect 1.1. Those will be replaced later using electronic protective resistors. I will implement this by using the RaspBerry Pi ZERO W or equivalent board. I will use MOSFETs as electronic switches and monitor the current flowing through them by measuring the tension that falls over the internal resistance of the MOSFET. Should the current exceed a value I do define in software the RPi ZERO W does detect this via its analog to digital peripheral and switches the MOSFET to interrupt the connection. As all RaspBerry Pis can communicate via WiFi the used RPi informs me as a user of its action by displaying the information on a window on my PC. This at the same time allows me to have a window on my PC desktop to either display the amount of current flowing to the control panel, monitored by each individual tension. The other possibility is to only expand that window when it has to interrupt a line and it requires my attention. I can reset that interruption as soon as I believe the cause is eliminated. You can also see on this picture the assortment boxes containing the full range of resistor values with 1/4 Watt.

 

 

I have also continued my efforts to have more space to place my stuff in an organized way! Here the drawers in construction to the right of the center power center. The next place to work on was using the shelve on the left side of my electronics workbench.

 

 

To achieve this I removed all what was in to levels, placed somewhere on the floor.

 

 

Here one of the 2 levels I am building with the drawers yet to get their finish.

 

 

The drawers still do not have their grips, just M 5 screws on which they will be mounted as soon as my fraise is repaired. You can appreciate that this has given me the opportunity to make a big step forward towards getting my electronics stuff organized.

[Hellmut1956]

The next advances that finally have let my family members and our friends to confirm that for the first time advances were perceivable are related to the job of adding drawers below the working surface of the new workbench. The implementation will be done the same way the drawers were added in the electronic workbench.

 

 

 

The first effort was to define were the steel rods would be placed and to prepare their installation by creating the holes and placing the screws in them which will held the horizontal rods. You can also see the wooden plates that protect the floor from being damaged by the workbench!

 

 

 

 

Here the work in progress!

 

Here you can see the 4 levels for drawers below the fraise and a large drawer at the bottom. Right now I have cut this large drawer in 3 pieces. It proved that otherwise the drawer was too heavy.

 

 

In this picture you can see the current status of my work. Below the lathe 1 have 4 levels of drawers, 2 in each, plus a large drawer at the bottom. All drawers will get this dark panels and until my frase is available again just the M 5 screws that will take the grips make it possible to open the drawers! Also it looks as if using Avery stickers with a picture of the content of a drawer and a textual description will help to find the right drawer when looking for something.

 

But also this picture shows for what is a challenge for me. As the 2 left most levels of drawers below the fraise have to be placed, like wise with those below the lathe, at such a distance from their common corner so that a drawer can always be opened when the neighboring drawer is fully inserted. I am placing 10 mm thick wooden place above the steel rods and on top of them the panel. The intention is to be able to hide the heads of the screws used to fix the horizontal rods which hold the wooden plates over which the drawers slide. So the panel will then hide the screws! Also, on the bottom of the drawers below the lathe you can appreciate how the panel below the lowest drawer is directly touching the floor to prevent dust from being collected there. The wooden plate below the steel structure is used to screw the wooden plate that hides the heads of the screws in position. The upper side of this plate is screwed to the wooden plate on which the lowest drawer slides. The side walls to the room where the drawers are inserted have to prevent stuff to fall into later inaccesibles places below and behind the elements. Specially in the corner there is an empty space that goes from the floor to the lower surface of the working surface of the workbench and has the width of both segments of the new workbench. As this room is totally inaccessible later I need to make sure nothing can drop in there!

 

 

 

This are 2 pictures from the left most drawer rack below the milling machine. Here I do plan to have a storage place for heavy and tall accessories for the milling machine, like the rotational table for it. This are 2 levels that use strong and thick wooden surfaces and will be left open to the front. Above those 2 levels are the 4 drawers of this left most stack below the milling machine.

 

 

 

Here 2 drawers that are placed at the top most level of drawers below the fraise. I frequently had the problem to start searching for the right length of screws and corresponding stuff to fix material I was working with on the milling machine. Now all the screws in 2 different diameters and the accessories belonging to them are stored in a drawer directly below the milling machine so that I see the choices I have and select the best fitting stuff for the purpose required. This kind of structure within the drawer is planned to be done for all of them below the lathe and the fraise. I do no have yet decided in which drawer and at which level I will place what. But I am sure as soon as I start using this 2 pieces of equipment again I will be able to make good choices.

 

At the end of this round of contributions to this thread I want just to show you which piece of equipment has proven the most used and most usefull tool in my workshop:

 

 

This band saw was stored in a garage by its former owner from whom I purchased my lathe. As he was trying to get rid of what he considered a none working band saw I got it for just a few Euros. Again, my good friend Jorge disarmed it, understood how it should work and why it was not working and fixed it. This band saw was made in the old communist part of Germany. Simple but rock solid!

[Nirvana]

Helmut,

I like your presentation of your workshop.

This is for our moderators, please re-locate this topic to "Where do you do it, ship modeling that is"....

[pompey2]

The evolution of a workshop, love it Helmut.

It's funny how a lot of us seem to get as much enjoyment in organising our tools as we do modelling.

 

Nick

[Hellmut1956]

@pompey2: Whatever i engage with I do it in the extreme way I always do things. The reasons to work on improving my workshop were this:

 

1. Due to not working anymore and still too young for retirement the lack of financial resources forced me to organize my workshop so I could find what I knew I already owned. Before this I preferred to buy something a second or even more frequent times.

2. Getting angry with myself of not finding what I was looking for I decided to fix this.

3. My fraise got damaged and to fix it i need empty working surface on my workbench. So I decided to have this principle force me to get my workshop in order!

 

Right now I am having again problems with my help that are keeping me from being concentrated on stuff I do. It is this deficit in concentration and the frequent being tired so that I do sleep far too much that is putting pressure on myself to overcome this!

[Hellmut1956]

My health problems are continue to delay my work on my workshop and ultimately on my sailboat model, the Carina. So just a short update:

 

As you can see, hopefully, in my first foto in the attachments, I have upgraded the office space in my workshop. I have a graphics card, GTX1060, which allow me to use up to 5 displays at a time. Here you can see the current 4. Additionally I have purchased an ACER 4K UHD display that has a resolution of 3840 x 2160. it is the one in the middle. I also purchased a new webcam, the Logitech BRIO  4K Streaming Edition that can record up to the same res as the display. Unfortunately as of now I can only take fotos with a resolution of 800 x 600.

 

 

 

I have further worked on my panel in my electronics workbench. While what I call the Panel 2. Generation:

 

 

 

The initial reason to make a Panel 3. generation were small displays I found that display voltage and current. So I wanted to add those displays to my Panel. As usual you run into quite a number of surprises. To fix those made me make strong changes to the previous version of my panel.

 

One problem is the size of those displays. They do not fit in "one level" above the corresponding receptacles for the 8 tensions offered by the panel! Another problem was that the displays measure the current that flows at each of those 8 tensions through the receptacles via the "Ground" line and is placed in series with the receptacles. So one "Ground IN" and one "Ground OUT" line.

This has the side effect that I need to change the principle of my new Panel and have "pairs of receptacles" both for the kind of receptacles you see in the foto of the old panel, as well as for the screwable connectors that you can see at the top of the old panel:

 

 

Edited July 15, 2018 by Hellmut1956

[Hellmut1956]

A lot of time has passed since the last time I did update my thread about my workshop. Health problems are slowing down my progress, saving money to be able to buy what I was tempted to buy and finally waiting for promotions like "Black Friday" added to it.

 

Listening to videos in YouTube, reading material related to topics I found to be interesting for me in those YouTube Videos and finally reflecting about those potential purchases and their integration into my workshop.

 

So the first piece of equipment I chose to buy after comparing possible alternatives was a circular Table saw. I decided to go for the Bosch Professional GTS 10 XC:

 

 

The key criteria that make me decide to buy this circular table saw were:

 

1. The precision of the longitudinal support. Many of those tend to result in having a different distance to the circular blade. The one of this machine corrects its position thanks to the way the fix on the back side of the support works. It get the support to be parallel to the blade.

2. In a German YouTube Channel called "Nachdenksport" the person running it intensively studies aspects of how to optimize the aligning of the table elements. He offers numerous stuff 3D printed that make possible perfect behavior and alignment.

3. The table of this circular table saw can be expanded to include a router table. Numerous expansion options get me as a result a piece of equipment that combines a table saw and a router table.

 

Equally relevant becomes the issue of absorbing the dust and chips originating in the use of this equipment

 

 

I am designing a system for my workshop, where the dust and chips from ideally any machine I use in my workshop dust and chips will be collected. This graphic shows the principle of such a system using a cyclone to separate dust and chips from the airflow that is being collected from any machine that will benefit from such a system. The polluted air with dust and chips flies into the cyclone horizontally and will spiral in the cyclone. The polluted content of the airflow will fall down in the cyclone and drop into the barrel. The air, now much cleaner will be collected vertically from the vacuum cleaner. The benefit is that a very little amount of the dust will be collected by the air filter and the dust that gets into the bag filter is going to be minimal. This the filters in the vacuum cleaner will remain empty and the suction capability of the vacuum filter will not be reduced.

 

 

You might guess the shock I had when the barrel I did purchased arrived. Knowing from reading in forums and seeing videos in Youtube, the barrel can implode due to the reduced air pressure within the barrel used. To prevent this from happening to me I ordered a metal barrel and I did chose one that had 210 liters of capacity.

 

 

Well, assuming I do live for another 2 decades that barrel will never be filled!

 

 

This is the industrial vacuum cleaner I did purchase.

 

 

Here the box with my circular table saw finally did arrive. I used the "Black Friday" promotions and got the saw for 50% of the price it was offered at Amazon a month ago.

 

 

When with a lot of effort I was able to put the box on the surface of what I call my old workbench and this was what I saw first opening it.

 

 

Here my circular table saw placed as desired on the old workbench. As you can see in this foto the desk surface consists od a good number of elements which all have to be aligned properly. The hole in the surface is were the red piece of aluminum shown on the last foto is placed and the blade will be visible there.

 

 

I also did purchase a second blade for my saw. Studying videos on Youtube I started to learn about how to use such a saw, what are the sources of danger in such a saw and how to eliminate this risks as much as possible. But I also did learn about what it means when the saw does its job along the direction of the wood fiber or across. That the distance between the teeth of a blade has to take into account the length of the chips that happen while the blade does its job. So the number of teeth of the blade that came with the saw was 24 while the second I did purchase had 64 teeth. The first blade is good when the chips are long and the one with more teeth when cutting across or when the material being sawn did not generated long chips. The groove you can see on the blade with the many teeth is to eliminate or reduce the vibration while cutting.

 

 

In a video on Youtube I took this image. It shows the desk of the table saw to be expanded and achieving this way to get a router table functionality added to my circular table saw. But I also got a view of how a wooden cabinet on wheels could look like that also included supports to prevent the table on the side of the router could bend itself down due to the weigth of the router. I decided to make it, or at least similar.

 

 

Here my cabinet while in construction. You can see the big openning on the top left of this cabinet. While the circular table saw cuts a lot of chips and dust is not collected by the dust and chips suction port of the saw, but drops to the bottom inside the table saw.

 

.

 

In this foto you can see my circular table saw from below. The grid that you can see is how the table saw allows chips and dust to drop out of the body of the saw.

 

 

 

Here the same view, but now without the grid. The shape of its opening is the shape of the opening you see on the wooden top side of the cabinet. Additionally you can see the black box on the left side of the opening, this is the motor and the aluminum case to its right is where the blade is, On a Youtube video on the channel "Nachdenksport", sadly only in German, a digital sensor is added to be able to display how much the blade will show above the surface of the table saw.

 

 

 

 

Here you see my circular table saw mounted on the cabinet in construction so that its opening at the bottom matches the opening in the cabinet.

 

 

[Hellmut1956]

 

Here ist the plate I did purchase from the company Sauter. They deliver wooden boards to be inserted into the Bosch table saw GTS 10XC. The version that I did purchase is the most expensive one because I did want it to show the same color as the table saw shows on its desk. The grey frame you can see placed within the opening of the board is made of aluminum and it is there so that the aluminium plate that will cover this opening can be made 100% aligned with the desk surface. This alignment and calibration word is key to enable me to get perfect results when using either the saw or the router.

 

 

here you see my table saw with the board inserted into the desk of the table saw by extending the surface of the saw to the right. Another detail I want to highlight is the element of the table saw that is with a white board replacing the aluminum red colored board with which the saw was delivered. This table element is rigid and mounted on the structure of the saw without it ever changing its alignment. This element is the reference to which all other elements of the table are aligned with. The wooden board that has been inserted into the surface of the saw is aligned together with the right most element when fixing the screws of the right most element. So as you see the table on this foto it is perfectly aligned to the right of the longitudinal support of the saw.

 

 

Here the link to the page where this aluminum plate could be purchased with more details of it. The version I have purchased is the one prepared to be placed in the opening of the wooden board and it has the perforations so that a TRITON TRA001 coul be mounted to it.

 

Here you can see the aluminum plate inserted and calibrated into the desk of my table saw.

 

 

This is my router TRIOTON TRA001.

 

 

 

Here you see my router hanging from the blue aluminum plate. Not because the pressure the supports that prevent the side with the router table functionality bend down my desk surface due also because the router is pretts heavy, I did build it this way because I did like it.

 

 

This picture shows with an acrylic plate how the router is mounted to the plate, which in my machine is this blue colored aluminum plate. The silver colort insert is to adapt the diameter of the opening for the milling head that will be used. You canalso see the handle, which inserted in one of the holes of the blue aluminum plate.. Turning it you can set the heigth of the milling head above the router table. I plan to use the same kind of digital display so that I can read the heigth of the milling head above the table surface.

 

 

But I did further improve my equipment. I did purchase an upgrade for the longitudinal support of the table saw. This upgrade consists of 2 aluminum profiles that can be moved closer or more distant from each other to make the opening between the as narrow as possible for the milling head that will be used.

 

 

In this picture you can see a silver colored box that is between the original longitudinal support of the table saw and the aluminum profiles of the extension for the router table. To this, at the back of the machine from this perspective, you can connect a flexible tube from the dust and chip suctioning system. Also the milling process of the router generates a lot of dust and chips. Having an opening exactly behind the opening for the milling head of the router dust and chips can be absorbed where it is generated. But this also shows you that connecting this combined circular table saw and the router table requires the suctioning system to have at least 3 ends connected to the machine.

 

 

Working with the circular table saw or with the router has taken the fingers of many operators when they were not concentrated enough on what they were doing. Even my families requires me to spend as much effort as possible to prevent me from getting hurt. Again, the videos on YouTube are an excellent source for information. Even more by studying all the material about safety when operating this machines I even learned to understand for what was the acrylic transparent part mounted across the 2 aluminum plates. This element has a surface that will be placed so close to the object being milled, that if the operators fingers slip, they will nit slip and get in touch with the milling head.

 

The other issue I did learn was related to the width to which the 2 plates are away from each other. As the work piece has to always be moved from the right to the left, if the opening is too wide the milling head can draw the work piece into the opening, as the milling head always moves counter clock wise.

 

Here the Link to this feather board from Bow I did purchase from Dictum.

 

 

 

As you can see in this foto of the router table side of my machine I have mounted the feather shown on the pevious picture to the lateral support upgrade for the table router. The feather on the right pressures the work piece to the support and the feather mounted on the left presses it onto the table surface. By the way the feather on the left I did install in the wrong direction. So while the feathers keep the work piece presed into the trayectory desired it also has a safety aspect. Work pieces can kick back and hurt the operator. Having the 2 feathers mounted on the right side they also make it impossible for the work piece to kick back and also that the work piece is drawn into the opening of the support by the milling head. I did like this so much that I did purchase an aluminum plate like the ones used in the extension of the lateral support on the router side, but 80cm long to upgrade my lateral support on the table saw side so that there also the feathers could add to my security.

 

 

This 2 grips do help additionally to keep my hands away from the blade of the table saw and the milling head of the router table The tool shown on the second picture explains itself. The one on the first picture is of use when you want to cut with the blade of your table saw a board on its narrow side, same applies to the router table. A victim board is used to move a board on his narrow side and keep it perpendicular to the direction that is being worked on.

 

Having learned so much about calibrating and aligning parts of the table saw by watching the videos on the Youtube Channel of Nachdenksport and having purchased quite a few of the products that he develop and demonstrated in his videos on one side and having a very good friend of mine print me 3D printed parts for my dust and chips collection system for my workshop, I was finally convinced that 3D printing would be very usefull for me. Not just while working on improving my workshop, but also for my sailboat model, the Carina. Thanks to the "Black Friday promotions" I could purchase the Creality Ender 5 Plus 3D printer for 50% of the price I have seen it recently offered.

 

3D printing is a science of his own right and I will present to you my printer, the cabinet I am building for it and write a couple of things related to the 3D printing. A challengue for placing my 3D printer in my workshop is the air polution due to dust and chips resulting from using other equipment in my workshop. My wife has place a strict veto onme to expand my workshop into other rooms in our house.

Edited March 21, 2021 by Hellmut1956

[Hellmut1956]

Slowly but steadily I am advancing with the work at my workshop. As building the furniture on which I will place my 3D printer involves drilling holes with a high level precision as to exactly where the holes drilled are gonna be and having had results by doing it by other methods failes to achieve good results I have decided to buy a drilling bench:

 

 

i had seen a similar drill bench used in a video at the YouTube channel Ingos Tipps about building a bench that added functionality I decided to buy this drill. It uses 2 laser beams to show a cross exactly at the place were the drill would drill the hole. With this I will be finally able to drill the holes exactly where I want them to be.

 

 

The video from which I took the picture shows in an extensive form the benefits of this bench. I will build it. The other tool I did purchase is this one:

 

 

On my first use drilling the holes to take the wooden dowels to hold a wooden plate in its position the results were less than perfect. But I think I have learned to be able to use it better.

 

 

The drawers im am going to build for this piece of furniture place a bunch of challenges to me. One is to drill the holes for the wooden dowels as precise as possible so they fit into the holes I will have drilled into the MDF plates. Here I believe starting by just drilling the holes for 4 dowels at the corners of the MDF plate, so that I can fix the plate into the right position and than drill the holes for the remaining dowels. But the challenge is that I need to fix the MDF plates for all drawers in their right position, as It gets more and more challenging the less vertical space is left.

 

The other challenge is that the wooden dowels at the center vertical wooden plate need to be used for fixing the plates on both sides of the vertical plate. How do I get the plates on the right side to take the wooden dowels at the center board. Still an open question for me.

 

And finally there is an experience I did gain when my old workbench had a huge drawer. The result was that in that drawer stuff ended up piling itself in there without order. Due to this experience the drawer will only be half as deep the length of the width of that furniture. Si I have the option left for the future to add drawers from the other side.

 

Finally I want to present you with my personal extension to the lateral support that is used both for the router table side of the bench and for the circular table saw on the other side. I have been so pleased with the Bow Feather DUO, the green parts you can see on my last picture of the router table. I have purchased a second of this feathers and I have purchased an aluminum plate that is like the 2 halfs of the lateral support for the router bench, but 12x80 cm long. So I can fix the feathers there in the same way as you can see on the router table side.

 

It looks like soon I will be able to operated my cyclone based dust and chips absorption system with my table saw. Its really just the beginning, but as my 3D printer becomes available on his new desk I will 3D print the missing adapters.

[Hellmut1956]

I have used my cyclon based absorption system for the first time and it went well.

 

The new ideas for improvements to my workshop are always flowing and I do try to keep pace in making those ideas real. A video at YouTube showed how to make a system to fight the pollution of the air in the workshop. The system has a filter system consisting of 2 filters set in series. The first one is there to catch the larger particles in the air, like visible dust particles and chips:

 

 

The filter can be cleaned, regenerated and the filter material is cheap to buy for replacement as this filter will get clogged pretty fast.

 

The second filter is using 2 pocket filters that will catch particles down to 1µm in size.

 

 

An important aspect of the video was the use of radial ventilators. While they con move big volumes of air they can also deliver the pressure to have the air flow through the filters. Important to be able to use this kind of filter was to find a compromise between how small particles in the air could be catched by the filter and how expensive it is.

 

 

This pocket filters can be regenerated  and so be used multiple times and they are cheap in comparison to other pocket filter supplier products that cost easily 120 Euros for 6 pocket filters. This shows why it is so important the first filter keeps as much parts out of the pocket filters.

 

Different from the radial ventilator the video uses I have decided to buy those 2 radial filters:

 

 

 

 

Both radial ventilators I have purchased and that are due to be delivered on Monday have speed regulators and a small display showing its speed.

 

From first feedbacks I have been getting from forum members in other forums I migged be shocked as I was when I did purchase a 120 litre barrel to mount the cyclon on it. I had no clue and was not aware of its size.

 

 

The feedback talked about having purchased a 40 m^3 ventilator and how much air it was it moved.

 

Well, having speed regulators coming with the ventilators I will be able to reduce the amount of air to an amount that fits. My reasoning was that purchasing the smallest radial ventilator with a speed control unit and purchasing a big one would make the whole range available to me.

 

The big radial ventilator is planned to be used to free the air in my workshop from polluting particles that cover all the stuff in my workshop and to reduce the amount of particles that could seriously hurt my lungs. This decision was driven because a friend of my son got serious problems with his lungs due to dust.

 

This system that will clean the air in my workshop from polluting particles does reduce the priority to build a cabin for my 3D printer Creality Ender 5 Plus.

 

 

This is the 3D printer. I set it up by mounting it on the working surface of what I cal my old workbench. I did verify it by making the calibration of the plate and it did work perfectly. i am planning and in the process to build a cabinet on which it and the cabin I am planning to build around so that the old workbench surface is free again.