First Order Retrieve-ability

I did not plan this....the gray drawer organizers fit perfectly above the louvre panels on the right side. I ended up needing them to get more stuff like my metric nuts and washers and my shoulder bolts out of flat stack organizers.

The drawer organizers I had on the wall to the left were going to be in the way when I get a bigger lathe someday. Putting them above the louvre panels on the left was just about perfect. Both sides top out at 7 ft which is easy reach for 6'2".

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This set up takes up 5.5 sq ft or 1.4% of my shop floor space.
 
I know this picture doesn't much look different, but I moved some stuff around to get even more into the bins and larger cap screws out of the smaller drawers to the right. Then more screws into the smaller drawers. The result is a bunch of empty organizers, more into nearly the same space, and room for growth.

A vast majority of the bins are Akro-Mils as are the blue drawer organizers. My snap rings are in the black organizers to the left.

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I also did some rearranging in the garage . I can now walk thru 2 different paths ! :encourage:
 
mmcmdl said:
I also did some rearranging in the garage . I can now walk thru 2 different paths ! :encourage:
Click to expand...

I almost have 2 paths now. I brought all my toolboxes and rollaway home from my old job. Yesterday was the last official day. I am now in the process of sorting and organizing my toolbox for my new job. I will only need the basic stuff. Going back to standing at a Lathe and the occasional mill all day. All manual. No need for all the tooling for Mold Making.


Cutting oil is my blood.
 
twhite said:
I almost have 2 paths now. I brought all my toolboxes and rollaway home from my old job. Yesterday was the last official day. I am now in the process of sorting and organizing my toolbox for my new job. I will only need the basic stuff. Going back to standing at a Lathe and the occasional mill all day. All manual. No need for all the tooling for Mold Making.
Click to expand...
Every time I started a new job , full or part time , I bought new boxes and new tools . Sometimes I worked at 4 companies at a time . This is how I ended up with a MSC satellite site . :grin: I am still looking for space for my Vidmar box and chest in at work that needs to come home . Most likely will be picking up a 10 horse RPC this week and finally hooking the machines up . It will be interesting to say the least where everything ends up .
 
mmcmdl said:
Every time I started a new job , full or part time , I bought new boxes and new tools . Sometimes I worked at 4 companies at a time . This is how I ended up with a MSC satellite site . :grin: I am still looking for space for my Vidmar box and chest in at work that needs to come home . Most likely will be picking up a 10 horse RPC this week and finally hooking the machines up . It will be interesting to say the least where everything ends up .
Click to expand...

My shop must be tiny compared to yours. My main shop is 12' x 20'. I've got room for a new 14 x 40 but not much more than what I already have.

I've got a nice workbench out in the garage and a big Milwaukee toolbox. Still room for a truck and suv.
 
While all of these boring bars are duel use, most of these were bought to use with my boring and boring/facing heads. I just bought the 3/4" shank Shars boring bars this week.
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So much better than a full drawer with all my short 3/4" and 1/2" boring bars jiggling against each other.

I put many of my lathe tools that I don't use often into the drawers with the inserts they use.

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Eventually my lathe will move and I want to eliminate the tool box beside it completely.

I have a stubby solid carbide 3/4" boring bar I thought would help on deeper bores, and it does, but the limitation is the over all rigidity of the mill. The stubby solid carbide 1/2" boring bars do pretty well too.

The high speed steel works great and it takes me longer to sharpen than the cut itself. Hence the tcmt insert boring bars to try out.
 
Picked up another 31 blue Akro-Mils bins today for $25.

A quick rough count gives me 678 individual bin/drawer locations. Some are doubled up so around 800+ individual sizes, types, and lengths.

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Weaponized autism at its finest.


This does not include the storage locations for tooling. That would take me well over 800 drawer/bin locations.

With tooling drawers and bins I have over 910 individual locations.
 
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I tend to clump similar tools together - all the boring bars are in the same holder and there's the two wrenches for adjusting the boring head. All the R8 collets and R8 chuck are on a holder on the mill.

I have a small sturdy cart with all the common mill stuff on the top shelf (parallels, calipers, center drills, deburring tool) as well as the rotary table. I don't use the rotary often, but I am willing to give up a small amount of FOR space because it's heavy and I don't want it on a bottom shelf.

The second shelf is end mills. When I bought my mill, it came with a ton of tooling sorted by shank diameter, not cutter diameter. I thought this was really odd until I realized that I always try and use the same size shank for less collet changing. Now I just grab the 2x4 with all the same shank size endmills, and the rest of the time they are out of the way. So far I like it.
 
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