Post Your Workshop pic/s
 

Hello,

So, now that our 2016 official FRC season is over we are finally doing some much needed space overhauls.

I realized there was no thread like this here and thought it might be fun!

Ill give some info on our workshop/room/workspace/ect in a second but, first I would like to give some info on what I think this thread can/should be.

Everyone should post 1 - 3 pictures of their space with a small or large ;) blurb about it.

Without further ado I will show off our current space.
http://imgur.com/wCMowjt

The top of the pic shows the view from the main hallway. Where as the one on the bottom shows it from where the robot is.

We are very lucky to have the entire room dedicated to us, and right now it is in our "Practice" configuration. You may notice the 3 large tables in the back. Essentially when we need to work we fold all of them down creating tons of workspace. And, when we need to practice we fold them up while still having a little bit of workspace in the form of the 3 tables on the left of the room.

Right now we are working with our school district to expand the space.
You may notice the doors in all 4 corners of the room. Luckily those all lead to another room. The one to the left when you walk in is a small closet (Used to be a very small bathroom with a toilet and urinal (Sink was outside)) that will be turned into raw materials storage. The room to the right is fairly large and will be turned into a computer lab for CAD and programming. The room to the left in the back is also fairly large and will be turned into a storage area and clean assembly area. The room to the left in the back is a garage which will be our machining room. It will house all the large tools you see in the pictures along with a Manual Mill and, hopefully a CNC router. The main room will then house a 1/2 field, projector + Smart board and, a few small tables. We do not have full confirmation that we can get these spaces (They are currently filled with computer trash waiting to be recycled) but, we are hopeful.

Now enough about my teams space lets hear about yours ;)

Re: Post Your Workshop pic/s
 

Does any of that computer "trash" happen to be for sale? :D

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Currently it's way more messy but here's our workshop! (Notice the pinball machine in the back, it's awesome :) )...

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We definitely had to get creative for this first year. Our community team met in multiple places.

Our local library has been a fantastic sponsor, offering us the use of their multipurpose community room. It is a great classroom with two projectors, tables and chairs. We used it in the off season for team building, brainstorming, workshops, open houses, fabrication of a KOP drive train - anything that involved only hand tools and not making a lot of noise or a lot of mess. We were even able to stretch that a little bit when they offered the use of the room for drive practice - did you know that plywood defenses leave splinters all over the place? :ahh:

Our second partnership was with the community recreation complex. They offered us access to the upstairs lobby area, overlooking the swimming pool and the fitness centers. We turned this into open, classroom style space for software, business, and some drivetrain work. Downstairs, in a storage area behind the gymnasiums, they gave us the use of a 6'x10' storage cage where we kept all our tools and robot parts, and the use of the rest of the back area to do fabrication work and set up our bench tools: a drill press, a miter saw, and a compressor.

Finally, one of our mentors got us access to a company lounge in the building he works at, giving us another space where we could work on the robot or the software, with 24/7 availability. As Bag and Tag approached, we started working at the recreation complex, and when they closed at 10pm, we moved everything here for late night assembly, wiring, and testing sessions.

We became very good at packing up the essential tools and bringing them to one of these areas for practices and work sessions. One fun side effect was the amount of attention we gathered as folks doing their workouts, or kids coming for tae kwon doe lessons, would watch us progress and cheer us on from week to week.

While we are extremely grateful to all of our sponsors, we are hoping to find something a little more permanent that we can settle into and set up some shop/storage space!

Re: Post Your Workshop pic/s
 

The shop

The mills are next to the car and upstairs.
Make yourself at home.

Re: Post Your Workshop pic/s
 

You have the Best space :) EVER!!!

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Not bad for a small space! Nice pinball!

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I note, with some chagrin, that your build space looks a lot like my basement...

No, guys, no. Not happening! :yikes:

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It's been on our to-do list for a while to start an FRC Cribs style blog series talking about team shops. If someone else wants to take that on feel free, I think it could be really useful for the community.

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Here's where we build: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GhRCL1eLWw

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1511 has had many different setups in our 12 years of FIRST. We've become increasingly good at morphing into the various rooms at our school that fit our needs throughout the year (still no place we can leave a full field up all year though :rolleyes: )

Cafeteria: Large scale team meetings, strategy and design brainstorming, where we setup field parts and carpet for driver practice.

Computer Labs: We utilize two computer labs. One is a general purpose "noisy" room and one is used for programming, CAD, or integration meetings and is typically far quieter.

Shop: The action room where dreams are made. Also tubes from 2011 and one blue banner from 2005 for some reason.

PHS is very generous with the time/space they allow (and we feed the janitors, so they don't mind).

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This is our shop as of this year, so much is new.





And the most important part of the shop, the Shop Doge!!!


Please let me know if you have any questions about our shop, how we run it, how we got it, or if you want more detailed pictures

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I like the floor. It gives it a bit of a retro look. The shop doge is a good idea; you just need a concession stand!

Woah that's a lot of Mills.

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Scary thing is that we have had all 5 in use at least twice this season, gives me the warm fuzzies inside seeing so many of our machines in use. Especially after all the work we put into cleaning and upgrading them over the summer and off season.

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Here's the latest panoramic of our workshop I can find, from the end of August. It is a "portable" temporary building on campus, located right here (the middle of the five small buildings).

We rearranged a bit in November, moving the portable shelving units to the panelled wall to the left, and the green workbench/storage box to the right of the 'bright" window. It's much smaller than the classroom we were working in our first four years, but we don't have to set it back up as a classroom at the end of each build session, which is both a blessing and a curse (especially the days before bag and tag when housekeeping was put way on the back burner).

We have a 12 foot built-in rack for metal, wood, and PVC stock, a 2'x4' freestanding 5-shelf unit without wheels, two 16" x 48" shelf units with wheels, an approx 15 drawer toolchest, two storage workbenches, two 4'x6' workbenches, two 3'x5' workbenches, and a couple of old desks for computer programming, as well as a freestanding drill press.

We also (this year at least) had a half-covered concrete pad behind the classroom where we built last year, (100 ft SSW of the workshop) where we do most of our saw, grinder, and large projects like building defenses and pit displays. We keep these tools on a cart which stows to the right of the position where the photo was taken.

It slopes about five degrees towards the back

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Here's our build space today right before our final unbag period. It is a classroom in our school, which we share with a teacher.

Since there are classes in this room during the school day, we need to stuff everything into our very messy back closet (the second picture), which we also share with the teacher and an art teacher in the adjoining room. Like GeeTwo mentioned, this forces us to clean up, but also is somewhat annoying. Over February vacation, we didn't have to clean up, so the room became catastrophically messy.

Our practice area (not shown), is a carpeted meeting area in the center of the middle school wing, which is also in use during the day.

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Three years this is what our shop looked like. It was a 20 foot shipping container with about 1/3rd being used for storage. We were able to field an Einstein caliber robot with what we had in there. It wasn't easy, but we never settled for good enough.



Our bench grinder wasn't even inside, poor thing was bolted to a broken table outside under the eaves. It has a much nicer home now and doesn't need to worry about being stolen anymore.


In fall of 2013 we got a Bridgeport mill and a Harbor Freight lathe(not shown) and wired our crate up with 3-Phase power via a $300 extension cable 50 foot long to plug into the classroom. We split the phases off to 3 circuits, one for north outlets, one for south, one for the switchable overhead lights, and all 3 going to the Bridgeport at the back of the crate.


Even our shop last year and our meeting space were tiny and ill equipped compared to what we have now. But we only have it because of our persistence with the school and our eternal vigil on Craigslist hunting for good deals.

I really do miss being able to tell people we work out of a shipping container, it's really far more inspiring to people. I suppose that's the march of progress however.

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I've been trying to figure out if local building code will allow me to construct a building with single story sections made out of shipping containers joined by a central structure. Specifically so that if I need to move any part of it one can back up a truck.

Handy if they raise my property taxes :yikes:.
Leave behind the small central structure with roof and concrete floor like a gazebo in a field.

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That actually seems like a really good idea. Luckily the weather will hold up for you guys most likely. Most of our build season we are battling snow. Every once in awhile we can open the garage door but that has only been the past few weeks.

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If you live in the greater NYC area, the answer is no. The building codes will not allow that. You might be able to get a variance if you have the will and the money to fight the local planning board and city council.

I looked into something like this a few years ago, basically the shipping containers would be considered something akin to sheds or temporary shelters. All requirements for the building would have to be satisfied by the central structure. In most of this area, there are some rather restrictive minimum square footage requirements.

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Not entirely true. I live in Long island (Greater NYC area) and a burger place opened up down the street made out of shipping containers.

http://syossetjerichotribune.com/wp-...r_012716A1.jpg

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Northern, NJ for me. I suspect each local town here would view it differently. Mount Olive would probably say no, since they seem to have issues with truck boxes of any sort. Long Valley, which has farms, might view it differently. As well might towns in Warren County or Sussex County.

I wouldn't be adverse to pouring a pad for the containers, removing the doors, or obviously meeting the relevant building codes. I figure they let people on my road build a house from prefabricated parts on a pad it's not all that much different once you put the container on the pad.

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The idea is you would be stuck basically making them permanent structures any way with the added fun of having to fight the planning board in the process. Now a 'temporary' shop with RV style power and utility hookups..... that could probably be done with a minimum of hassle.

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Here is a picture of our workshop. The image itself is a screen shot from our website, hence the text.

In this room we have a cnc mill, lath, and router. TIG welder, manual mill, chop saw, drill press and grinder.

We also have access to the school's metal shop(mills, lathes, welders) and wood shop(table saws, chop saws)

The picture is taken from the upper level balcony in the room which is were our programers usually work. below them on the first level we have a storage room that houses all of our raw stock and old components.

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My 1996 Dodge RAM B3500 with 3kW continuous inverter and 3ft fiberglass cap agrees.
Unfortunately it was a grooming van, so after I removed the all natural 'shag' carpet it needs some welding :p.

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This is a great thread. As a parent just turned Mentor for our second-year team, I see shop setup as a key element for a smooth and efficient workflow. I plan on introducing the team to some concepts of LEAN Manufacturing, especially the concept of 5S to eliminate waste in all of our workspaces and using Kaizen to get the job done.

Once I get a handle on this, I'll gladly share any information I can that helped us with organizing our shop area. In the meantime, if anyone here is interested in improving efficiency, please take the time to read the links above.

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Team Caution works out of one of the warehouses of Microchip, one of our sponsors. We have access to a "Full" field space, Robot storage, and a 80ft x 30ft space, split into 2 rooms. (Programming and Workshop). Basic tools. Drill press, bandsaw, chop saw, bench grinder, break, arbor press, vises, belt sander, and a broken mini-lathe.

Our walls for our field disappeared over the summer, so its just an old carpet, which will hopeful be replaced in a few months.

The workshop will be going through some upgrades over the off-season, which will allow for more raw stock storage and better overall layout. (maybe some tool upgrades as well...)

Team Caution is an AZ community based team.

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You had me when I saw the box of donuts in the third picture. :D

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We have been working on this project for years. Our whole program here at Hawthorne has grown out of our FRC Team 207 and has become the School of Manufacturing and Engineering. These are just a couple of pictures of our shop, not including bench space. We just moved into a purpose built part of our school that houses our manufacturing and engineering academy a little over a year ago. If you have questions ask away, we have been through the whole process, design, build, purchase, install, and "breaking in"
The last picture is our Robot gallery that houses every robot we have built. and doubles as a half field during build season. At least in theory we haven't had the chance to build a half field yet.






Team 207
Metalcrafters

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Here is a video of our metal shop. In the past three years we've added our tools to the new pit carts in the video and added airline drops above the three work benches shown in the video. Not shown is our wood shop that houses all of our wood related machines.

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I spy a Techno Router and a Tormach Slant Pro 15L. I'd love to chat with you about these machines.

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I'd love to comment if I may, sorry if I'm derailing slightly. I haven't had a ton of experience with the Techno Routers we have at Notre Dame, but I know they're used a lot for Senior Design, our Robotic Football Team, CAD/CAM, and other clubs and personal projects. My only experience using one was cutting HDPE for a class project, and I think we use them mostly for plastics and plywoods, but they seem to hold a tolerance well. We have three smaller ones (I'd guess around 3' x 3' but I haven't measured) and a 4' x 8' table for doing larger work.

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Unfortunately i know next to nothing about any of our cnc equipment, it is my personal belief that you can build anything with a hacksaw, welder, and grinder. :D :D :D

However from what i have seen the lathe has been working great so far. We actually just just it all setup a few weeks ago and it has done very well at machining brass chess pieces. Unfortunately we were not able to use it on any real robot parts this year but it should be very handy in the future.

Wow, incredible space. I dream of one day having a shop like that. Jaw dropping machinery too, especially those two TM-1Ps. :ahh:

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Pictures are a few years old, but gives a general idea:

• Dedicated build/practice space
• Machine Shop

Not shown:

• Dedicated Classroom
• Computer Lab
• Storage Rooms
• Material Storage Loft
• Overflow workspace

Overall we have approximately 12,000 sq/ft of combined dedicated and shared workspace available to us.

Also, not really part of our workspace, per say, but we also rebuilt the display case in our schools front entrance recently.

Re: Post Your Workshop pic/s
 

Well, I'm jealous. I see 7 Series I Bridgeports, 2 Series II Bridgeports, 4 bandsaws, 5 of the exact same model lathe(11x30?), 4 pedestal grinders, a CNC mill, and a CNC lathe? The only thing you are missing now is a CNC router.

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Actually... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiaydzvYsrM

Also worth noting, the 2 green mills are 2.5-axis CNCs, and the red CNC mill and CNC lathe haven't worked in the 10 years I've been there (missing parts, or software or something).

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Attached are photos of our shop. It's pretty small by comparison to some of the shops that other teams on here have, but it does the job. Not pictured is our locked storage closet for the hand tools. We like it, and small as it is we make the best of it.