New Workspace

Now that I have thoroughly moved in to our new house, I have been busy setting up my hobby workspace.

My office/workspace is a 3m x 3m room with a good sized window for natural light. I have set up a table in my office for my hobbies (mostly electronics)

The first thing that I did was to make a pegboard that I could hang my tools on - so that they were within easy reach and easily seen.

Then, I mounted my small components drawers onto the wall facing my workbench. Jaycar have discontinued these cabinets, so it was a bit of a pain to get the last two. There are six of them, each with 32 small component drawers and one large drawer. That gives me 192 small drawers and six large drawers. These drawers contain my through hole components, blank PCB, breadboards and some other bits and bobs.

You’ll notice that there is a binocular microscope on the bench, my darling wife (an entomologist) gave me her old ento-scope for soldering small components.

I have a couple of pencil cups on my workbench with pens and pencils as well as a collection of Staedtler Lumo Colour and Sharpie markers (for fixing PCB laser transfers).

My solid core wire, stranded wire and solder are all in easy reach too.

 

The workbench is a fold-up table that we bought some time ago. The LED magnifying lamp is mounted on the end of the workbench so that I can swing it into place whenever I need it. I’m using an old office chair for comfortable seating … it’s pretty sweet.

I mounted the drawers on the wall with a gap underneath for other miscellaneous tools and project parts. The hobby/cutting mat on the peg-board is usually on the workbench when I’m working so that I don’t make a mess of the workbench and to make cleaning up easier.

Right beside my workbench I have a couple of bookshelves for books and other larger components. On the white bookshelves (on the third shelf down) I have my collection of SMD components. I bought a mixed collection of 0805 capacitors and resistors some time back, so that I could practice and learn soldering of these tiny components. I have the components in a bunch of fishing tackle boxes that I bought from K-Mart ($2.50 each). I made the timber bookshelf last weekend. I was hunting for a bookshelf that fitted in the space between the white bookshelf and the door, I couldn’t find one the right size, so I bought some pine and made it myself … I’m pretty happy with how that turned out.

Anyway, that’s my new electronics workspace. I’ve tried to organise the tools and consumables as efficiently as possible, making sure the things that I use most often are most available.

I am, however, moving the PCB manufacturing tasks out to my workshop in the back yard. Mostly so that I can keep things like Hydrochloric acid and hydrogen peroxide out of harms way, it also means that the fumes from acid etching don’t stink up our house.

Now all I need to do is to work out what my next project is going to be … I’ve been thinking about making an SMD version of my 9V to 5V Voltage Regulator circuit.