MXtras Shop Pics

[mxtras]

OK, Guys. I have been talking about doing this for a while now, but have never really had enough down time or made enough progress to post anything of great interest.

In January of this year I began working on a commercial site for my company - MXtras. I make a product that transports MX bikes without straps - see my profile for my desperately-in-need-of-an-update website.

Anyway - long story but the shop is finally taking shape. The following few posts are a few pics of the shop and some of the goodies I have been working on to organize my mess. What does this have to do with CNC? Nothing - but thanks for asking.

This was the shop in March - all the other photos I have are 35MM - I got my digital in March:

The photos show my 1500 SqFt area being walled off from the rest of the building. The building owner did the wall construction, by the way. I would have done things a bit differently, but he did use 5/8 firecode drywall at least. The entire building is about 9000 SqFt and is an automotive cylinder head shop. I am renting this space.

More to pics to come....

Scott

[mxtras]

Here's some boring pics of the office area build out. This occured between March and June.

Scott

[mxtras]

And then finally - the shop is taking shape.

When I began, the entire area was AFU (all 'messed' up). I spent several days pulling drop ceiling hangers and hardware (there were a total of 3!!) off the rafters, then I yanked every piece of wiring out to start from scratch. I pressure washed, primed and then painted the ceiling. This part alone took almost a month.

I scraped about 3/8" of hardened and packed grease off the floor in many areas and pressure washed the floor until it no longer would bead water. Cleaning the floor took several days.

I ran all new conduit and wiring, including hanging $4K (new cost) in lights that were obtained from a local shopping mall demolition site. The shop has 208 "Red Leg" 3 phase power. I ran new conduit and pulled wire for all of the shop outlets and wired the office as well. The entire shop is also wired for a network using what my landlord calls "Either-net"...he's comical.

Jeesh - what else...painted, of course, ran through 25 gallons of drywall compound and who knows how many rolls of tape. I also put up a new bay door.

I added another pic of the office and bath build-out - this one was taken in August after I had installed and painted all the trim. In the bath, you can see a shower stall......you never know!

Scott

[mxtras]

So I took official posession of the space on August 9th. I realized that I had nothing to put all of my stuff on or in, so I had to build tables and storage units.

This is the first thing I built - a welding table. The welding table tips in around 1200 pounds. The top is not as flat as I wanted it but it will have to do for now - I will "laminate" it with a sheet of ground 1/2" plate when $$ permits or I may just buy a reconditioned acorn welding table.

You'll notice the ends of the tubing on the welding table are open. I always miter my tubing-constructed pieces but in this case I left the ends open as part of the design - the open ends are useful not only for storage but for straightening or tweeking weldments.

You can see a few 2'X8' tables in the background of the second pic as well as a cart for the bench and tool grinders.

More to come.....

Scott

[mxtras]

After the welding table was up and running, I decided that I wanted to maintain separate organization for different areas so I decided to build what I call WorkStations.

Scott

[mxtras]

And just recently, I finished the WorkStations and finally got the Welding area somewhat put together.

The welders are a Miller Synchrowave 250DX TIG and a Miller Pulser, dual gun MIG in case you were wondering...

Scott

[mxtras]

I have built 4 WS so far - here are the others in their semi-permanent homes -

More pics shortly....

Scott

[mxtras]

At some point during the construction of everything else, I managed to squeek in a stand for my HF mini lathe. This will be CNC'd to make pins. I bough a cheapy lathe so I wouldn't feel bad for hacking it up - I plan to make an auto-loader and fully automate the modification of Stainless pins, so this lathe is going to spend it's inexpensive life making snap ring grooves and profiling the ends of pins. It will be used in a 1" envelope. So - this is the stand for it. The stand is 3"X4"X.125" wall tubing and is very rigid. I scraped the pads the lathe sits on so it would not get twisted when I cranked it down.

I added several drawers for tools and such. The last pic is the current state - I am making covers and chip guards for it this week, but I am working on a few more storage cabinets so, since it is not a priority it may not get a whole lot of attention anytime soon.

More pics in a week or so - this is all I have right now. I am making more of the large cabinets for production supplies and hardware. I will post them up when they are complete.

Scott

[Mcgyver]

wow nice shop, very impressive. Workstations look great - are the panels all stainless? how did you work the material or did you buy it sheared to sized? man, I wish i had that welding set up

everything looks great, but a quad chip tray?

[Ken_Shea]

Congratulations Scott,
I know how much work that entails, perhaps even more time spent in thought then work, whatever, it really looks professional, you have done a super nice job.

Ken

[Jason Marsha]

That's a lot of hard work, Congrats you did a superb job.
I especially like the workstation idea. They look so good you may have a market in workstation sales, I really think people would buy them.

Jason

[mxtras]

I appreciate all of the comments, guys.

I have recieved many PMs asking for details, so I will share the plans and construction details in a future post in this thread. Time is a bit short right at the moment.

I would entertain manufacturing these for anyone, but I think they would be a bit pricey....I have probably about $250 in each just in purchased components and materials, many of which were obtained as seconds or scratch and dent (the aluminum panels).

Thanks again! I appreciate the interest! If you have any specific questions I will be happy to share info here.

Scott