Our shop spaces.

I wanted to start a light thread about what our shops look like, whether your at a bench in your basement or have an all out warehouse operation. Don't share your proprietary stuff obviously but let's see what you got. I am in the midst of a total shop overhaul so I will post every day that I have an update on the shop for at least the rest of the month.


Today we began assembly of the larger shipping area, which at this point was just wherever I could fit. So much cleaning had to happen before we even got to this point. We started off with all the USPS boxes we used on top, labeled for ease of restocking and then we added envelopes (which I need to order more of) and our regular trays for cpus and ram. Those trays are what you receive when you request packing material. To the left of these pictures is our standing bench, a 4x8 work surface for packaging and shipping. It will have the label computer on it with printer. We are missing the rolls of bubble wrap and foam because we run out constantly!

Another day, another update. What we have here is a 4x8 shipping table ready to go. The next order of business is more storage shelves and more tables, setting up the ram testing bench is priority ONE.

I think you will probably be underwhelmed lol. I modify the bios and voltage regulators of standard motherboards, using those to test ram. I had spent 2200 on a pro level ram tester similar to what you can find on ebay and it was junk, telling me ram was good when it didnt work in a regular PC. The solution was to edit the bios manually and flash it as a custom bios. The the only task to to find a common board with a plug in style bios. That way when the motherboard memory slots are wore out it the bios can be easily swapped to another board.

Wow i have never seen a shop floor so clean....im emberassed to show some pics of my workspaces

Originally Posted by armygreywolf

I think you will probably be underwhelmed lol. I modify the bios and voltage regulators of standard motherboards, using those to test ram. I had spent 2200 on a pro level ram tester similar to what you can find on ebay and it was junk, telling me ram was good when it didnt work in a regular PC. The solution was to edit the bios manually and flash it as a custom bios. The the only task to to find a common board with a plug in style bios. That way when the motherboard memory slots are wore out it the bios can be easily swapped to another board.

Way cool solution. Thanks for sharing what must have taken some time to work out. 73, Mike

Thanks Mike (both of ya). This place was extremely messy and I am very ashamed at how far that went, so....this is turning into a chronicle of us starting from scratch AND expanding at the same time. I also want you guys to see the efforts we go to making sure all received material get's a proper treatment. Obviously like the first post stated, I'm not going to show proprietary things, such as rigs of my own design modification.

Efficiency is paramount, it's just two of us at the shop right now and I am finding myself falling behind because a percentage of time is spent simply trying to operate within clutter.

Originally Posted by armygreywolf

Efficiency is paramount, it's just two of us at the shop right now and I am finding myself falling behind because a percentage of time is spent simply trying to operate within clutter.

I feel your pain. I'm up to my hips in stuff needing to be processed and am stepping over it to do it. I keep trying to get ahead but I still find it tough to choose what to take the time to test and sell and what to just scrap. 73, Mike

The setup I run is gondola shelving. I'll grab a photo when I'm at the office, but I love the fact that I can instantly add or remove shelves as I need. Mine came from a store that closed down- if you can luck into that situation, the stuff is usually pretty cheap as shelving goes

Mike, one of the tenants of business I have learned in the scrap world, particularly ewaste is you have to increase your labor capacity, once you fall through on clutter and inefficiency it will never recover on it's own. It will be a never ending rearranging of material just to create work flow. I have been battling this on two fronts for more than a year. Finally decided enough was enough and hired more people, increased the space we use, and every single day we spend at the shop is at least 3 hours of cleaning right now. You guys are seeing what my standards are, clean floors and organization...anything else is killing profits and I don't say that lightly. Even on a very small scale just stop and think about the process, how much time do you spend grabbing tools, switching bits, looking for boxes, crates, buckets etc. Not to mention pulling material to process. I find that even when well meaning, 50% of your time is spent not actually doing the process your trying to do. I know much of the forum members are hobbyists at this stuff but take it with a grain of salt. Improving how you do things, your organization and workflow...you will find yourself having more time in the day.

Keep up the photos I enjoy others working hard. Mike

A few days ago we built another table and started setting up another memory station.



Here we started setting it up, the mess started to creep up. Since then the guys came and removed almost all the stuff I don't own from the back half of the warehouse. I have plans next to build a "clean room" It will just be a small room with a vent for soldering and stuff like that, keep the dust down. I decided building a wall is just not going to help so instead we plan to upgrade the HVAC with it's own filtration.

interesting setup.......I assume those boards are for testing.......I'm sure your way is faster and more efficient but I just leave the boards in there cases to try to cut down on damage they may receive plus makes for easier stacking when they are not in use