Build a great workbench

[Whuffo]

Smooth, easy to clean surface and 32 rack units worth of 19 inch rack space. Start with the end pedestals; like these http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/ER16/ - the 16 unit rack produces a workbench just over 30 inches high. If you want a higher work surface, use the 20 unit racks; that'll put the top at just over 36 inches. You can get those racks from many vendors under many names, usually much cheaper. They're not fancy, but they're very strong and durable.

Top them with a sheet of tempered glass - check with the folks in your town that make glass storefronts; the glass they use in their doors is just right and you can probably get a blemished piece at a steep discount. Lay that across the tops of your racks / end pedestals and you're done. Is it breakable? Probably, but it's going to require much more force than you'll ever apply. And so easy to clean; solder doesn't stick to glass. Putting a light underneath makes it easy to "see through" PC boards.

Mine was built this way, I've been using it for over 5 years already. It was shipped half way around the world when I moved to Asia, and it made it here with no damage - even through I didn't take the equipment out of the racks for shipping. Outlet strips and such are attached with heavy double-stick tape. Works great.

After a day of hot and heavy soldering iron action, running across the spatters with a putty knive removes all the splats. Then a little window cleaner returns it to bright and shiny again. And it looks great; no more of that plywood and 2x4 stuff for me.

[birdie]

Pics?

[Kompost]

Guess you can't do any heavy percussive maintenance on this table

Pics please

[Whuffo]

Pics to come later; workshop is torn apart right now for some upgrades. Wish the room it's in was bigger, but I have to work with what I've got so some creative wall shelving is underway.

[Capital]

What About Static control ?  Glass can be tribocharged with a good bit of static charge. Not as bad as plastic but still potentially damaging to sensitive chips. You can spray the surface with some kind of commercial anti-static chemical and provide some kind of drainage path to ground. You could use a strip of copper adhesive backed tape on an edge to provide a contact on the surface and then drain through a wire attached to it to ground.

[dfmischler]

At home, I mainly do electronics work at an old kitchen table with a formica top.  I built a fairly serious workbench for woodworking (kinda like this, but without a tool till).  It's also been used for small engine teardowns, welding small parts on a steel plate on top of it, etc.  That is what I mean by a durable workbench.

[geo_leeman]

At home, I mainly do electronics work at an old kitchen table with a formica top.  I built a fairly serious workbench for woodworking (kinda like this, but without a tool till).  It's also been used for small engine teardowns, welding small parts on a steel plate on top of it, etc.  That is what I mean by a durable workbench.

I think I would be worried about static control as well.  My desk has a glass top and I always work on some other surface temporarily laid on top.  Wood or even the paper style "PIG" mats. 

[minime72706]

I (more like my boyfriend) built a workbench for me out of 1.5" steel tubing, some rack rails, some generic shelving rails, and a butcher-block tabletop. Here's a picture of it from some months ago when he snuck into the basement and took a photo without me hearing him approach... creepy:
MIG-welded to within an inch of its life. It's extremely overdesigned.

The next project, this time with aluminum, is a shelving unit designed to hold Plano 3700 series divided boxes for my components. I can't wait. I also intend to build a nicer desk for doing computer stuff on. I found it extremely impractical to solder and prototype on the same surface as "the other stuff" Very messy.

[Whuffo]

What About Static control ?  Glass can be tribocharged with a good bit of static charge. Not as bad as plastic but still potentially damaging to sensitive chips. You can spray the surface with some kind of commercial anti-static chemical and provide some kind of drainage path to ground. You could use a strip of copper adhesive backed tape on an edge to provide a contact on the surface and then drain through a wire attached to it to ground.

I use an anti-static mat when it's appropriate. Don't get too carried away with static protection, though - there was a time when looking at a CMOS chip crosseyed would cause it to fail. Since then, the chip designers have gotten a lot better at protecting their devices. They're not indestructible, but it's not hard to keep them safe these days. If you need to "static spray" your glass work surface, clean it well with window cleaner, then wipe it down with a solution made of 1 part dish washing liquid to 32 parts clean water. Let it dry, then buff to bring back the shine. That'll keep the entire surface at the same potential for all practical purposes.

Your sensitive components don't care what the difference between ground potential and your work surface is. All they care about is the voltage differential across their pins, so just static coating the work surface is sufficient - as long as you're in contact with that work surface when you're playing with bare chips. Not hard to do.

I haven't really thought about static protection much since I moved to the tropics; the local humidity is more than enough to keep things static free.

[Whuffo]

I (more like my boyfriend) built a workbench for me out of 1.5" steel tubing, some rack rails, some generic shelving rails, and a butcher-block tabletop. Here's a picture of it from some months ago when he snuck into the basement and took a photo without me hearing him approach... creepy:
MIG-welded to within an inch of its life. It's extremely overdesigned.

The next project, this time with aluminum, is a shelving unit designed to hold Plano 3700 series divided boxes for my components. I can't wait. I also intend to build a nicer desk for doing computer stuff on. I found it extremely impractical to solder and prototype on the same surface as "the other stuff" Very messy.

Looks very nice - I find that a larger work surface is a big plus, though.

[minime72706]

It's like 5' wide --- yeah it could be bigger. Situation will improve once I build a "computer" desk.

[nanofrog]

It's like 5' wide --- yeah it could be bigger. Situation will improve once I build a "computer" desk.

I built one of the same size (also welded).

Still need to add shelving though, and I was hoping you might be able to point me to what was used to make the upper back board & shelving out of.

TIA. 

[minime72706]

It's like 5' wide --- yeah it could be bigger. Situation will improve once I build a "computer" desk.

I built one of the same size (also welded).

Still need to add shelving though, and I was hoping you might be able to point me to what was used to make the upper back board & shelving out of.

TIA. 

Standard rack rails paired with some arbitrary shelving system I got at Home Depot. My boyfriend basically made the widths of the tracks such that if you attached a rack rail to either side, you'd get 3 perfect 19" widths. It's a pretty sweet coincidence. This is then built upon the usual steel tubing frame. It's attached in an annoying way, though --- when we moved it got damaged. Still a good desk for a good price if you already have the equipment.

[nanofrog]

Standard rack rails paired with some arbitrary shelving system I got at Home Depot. My boyfriend basically made the widths of the tracks such that if you attached a rack rail to either side, you'd get 3 perfect 19" widths. It's a pretty sweet coincidence. This is then built upon the usual steel tubing frame. It's attached in an annoying way, though --- when we moved it got damaged. Still a good desk for a good price if you already have the equipment.

Thanks.  I'll have to hit HD and take a closer look at what they've got (and take lots of measurements if possible).

Might take some creative finagling to get what I want to work (legs are 59.75" wide), but a couple of strips of plate might do the trick to get the width right.

[minime72706]

I can ask my boyfriend exactly how he got the width so perfect. I can also try to find the specific shelf rails I used.