Repair bench - seperate soldering bench?

[Roy D. Mercer]

Does anyone keep their soldering equipment on a dedicated workbench that's separate from their main repair / test bench? Looking for pros & cons to either. Thanks!

[daveyk]

Does anyone keep their soldering equipment on a dedicated workbench that's separate from their main repair / test bench? Looking for pros & cons to either. Thanks!

They tried that at work about 6 years ago. They tossed all the solder stations except one. It worked for about a month or so. At least I pulled three hako 929 stations and irons out of hazardous waist and a bunch of soldering supplies 8-). Then they bought the exact same stations that were tossed when a new boss came around and determined a central rework station didn't work. Corporations!


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[DimitriP]

If it's for a home single person setup, within an arms reach is the perfect place.

If it's for a work type environment, at an employer's  building, it depends on too many other factors.
Type of work,
number of people involved, any three ring binder standards that the company needs to adhere to, the genious level of the manager involved, what the user can get away with and who has to live with those decisions.
That should just about cover it





 


 

[GreyWoolfe]

If I had the space, I would have a separate soldering bench.  Half of my 8 foot workbench is for company use and the other half is for me.  My solution was to move my Hakko FX-951 and Metcal MX-500 stations and soldering supplies on to a small hand made cart that sits next to the bench.  I left the YIHUA 858d AND zd-985 on the workbench because the Yihua has a short cable and there is no room on the cart for the ZD-985 because the cart is actually an oscilloscope cart I made to hold a Tek 7000 series scope that I ended up selling to a friend.  I intend to build a new cart that will also hold the ZD-985 as the cable/hose is quite long.  I may also look into extending the 858D cable

[Electro Detective]

FWIW:  I've got an unused computer workstation desk with top shelving on WHEELS, (too nice and practical to sell for peanuts)
been meaning to kit it up as a 'mobile' soldering and desoldering department,
with all the bits and bobs I need so I can wheel it over or get it out of the way,
or relocate to a sunny area or outside etc for all out soldering work on boards or make cables etc.

The sliding keyboard shelf should come in handy too

Have not got around to it yet, but hoping it will work well and make life simpler and ...organized (?!!)   

[Electro Detective]

LOL, same double doors and flooring here 

but yours is tidier and more organized by a mile   

[P90]

Whatever your arrange is, make sure to clean your workbench... Here are some photos I just took from my dorm. Have fun.

My OCD is killing me... I should not have looked at those photo's... I have to go wash my eyes with bleach now...

[TheUnnamedNewbie]

I think getting two soldering irons might be worth considering. One (potentially cheaper or your "old" station) to keep at the general work bench - usefull for soldering/desoldering cables, modules, ... while debugging/prototyping. For serious soldering (populating boards, actuall IC work), a seperate space only for that - give yourself some room, avoids stuff like microscopes, flux, the 27 rolls of desoldering braid, etc. clutering up your protoype bench (and vice versa - no big powersupply and scopes in your way). Perhaps a old monitor/computer at your soldering bench so you can look up schematics/BOM/etc to check what component you needed and so on.

Oh, and ban all forms of food from that soldering bench. You want a snack? Get up, wash your hands and go eat. Don't want to risk any lead issues, even if it's very improbable if you actually use your brain. Not worth it imo.

[P90]

I think getting two soldering irons might be worth considering. One (potentially cheaper or your "old" station) to keep at the general work bench - usefull for soldering/desoldering cables, modules, ... while debugging/prototyping. For serious soldering (populating boards, actuall IC work), a seperate space only for that - give yourself some room, avoids stuff like microscopes, flux, the 27 rolls of desoldering braid, etc. clutering up your protoype bench (and vice versa - no big powersupply and scopes in your way). Perhaps a old monitor/computer at your soldering bench so you can look up schematics/BOM/etc to check what component you needed and so on.


Oh, and ban all forms of food from that soldering bench. You want a snack? Get up, wash your hands and go eat. Don't want to risk any lead issues, even if it's very improbable if you actually use your brain. Not worth it imo.

[/b]

What if he's using leadfree solder? :-)

[Roy D. Mercer]

Thank you very much to everyone who responded! I am to the point that I need a microscope but I am about out of room on my main bench. I really like TheUnnamedNewbie's idea. I can keep an iron on my main bench and move everything else to my other bench behind me with a microscope.

[P90]

Thank you very much to everyone who responded! I am to the point that I need a microscope but I am about out of room on my main bench. I really like TheUnnamedNewbie's idea. I can keep an iron on my main bench and move everything else to my other bench behind me with a microscope.

   

[Howardlong]

I run a separate test bench to my soldering bench, but it's not always been that way. I run a corner configuration, with a swivel chair, so moving between test/development and soldering is simple.

The main reason it's ended up this way is that most of what I do is embedded systems, so I spend a lot of time in front of the monitor and scope. Setting up a monitor together with a soldering station/microscope is difficult to achieve well ergonomically, so my compromise is to have the two workplaces adjacent.

[P90]

I run a separate test bench to my soldering bench, but it's not always been that way. I run a corner configuration, with a swivel chair, so moving between test/development and soldering is simple.

The main reason it's ended up this way is that most of what I do is embedded systems, so I spend a lot of time in front of the monitor and scope. Setting up a monitor together with a soldering station/microscope is difficult to achieve well ergonomically, so my compromise is to have the two workplaces adjacent.

nice, you have lots of neat things there. same colour as my acer...

[nctnico]

Does anyone keep their soldering equipment on a dedicated workbench that's separate from their main repair / test bench? Looking for pros & cons to either. Thanks!

IMHO it is better to have a soldering iron at every workbench. I have two work areas for testing and development (often 2 or 3 concurrent projects) and it sucks to take a circuit back&forth between the test area and the soldering area.

[Roy D. Mercer]

Well ... I can see how it could be a pain and risk breaking something that's apart by having to move it another location to solder. I'll see if everything will reach from my taller table on the left hand side. I'll probably order the microscope and wait until I receive it to do anything. I like how P90 has his out of the way but in arms reach of the main work area. 

[Howardlong]

nice, you have lots of neat things there. same colour as my acer...

The Acer laptop is on an arm, it has one function in life and that's as part of a production test jig that's replicated at the comtract manufacturer. It's not for day to day use!

The day to day machines are under the desk, one's a dual Xeon (16 core/32 thread) 192GB RAM 1U beast with a number of VMs on it that I use for my "other" career, and the other is a dual Xeon 24 core/48 thread 64GB dual GTX1070 beast that I use for development and 4K video render. Becuase you can ;-)