Hope for basement machinists

[Charles scozzari]

Good morning, I am so envious of you guys who large shops. Living in the city on a slab built house on 40'x80' my shop is an attached 1 car garage that I use for just welding and storage, So I opened a garage wall with a 5' wide doorway to a bedroom in the walk in apt. next to the garage and that is where am machines are. I sealed that bedroom from the rest of the apt. so now I have access to it from the garage. Doing that gave me a tool room 10'x16' but at that point I had to sell off many of the machines I dreamed I would have in my bigger shop. Im down to my 42" Bridgeport my 1440 lathe my Nichols horizontal mill r/f 35 radial arm drill all running off my 5 hp phase converter. Its tight but doable. Been trying to move for many years but with 6 grandchildren my wife will never leave here, so this it it.

 

[Steve-F]

Feeling your pain....how's 6' x 16' sound for cramped

 

[Charles scozzari]

WOW, I do have my dream shop

 

[Cadillac]

I couldn’t imagine having my shop in a basement. Unless custom built walk in level 12’ ceilings and would have to have a ventilation system and air scrubber. My wife would kill me. The walk from the garage to the house is where all the chips fall.
My question is has anyone moved a shop OUT of the basement and what’s your thoughts after that. I dread moving because of the weight of everything in my garage. If I had to move it out of a basement. I’m dying there!!

 

[C-Bag]

My question is has anyone moved a shop OUT of the basement and what’s your thoughts after that. I dread moving because of the weight of everything in my garage.

+1! This is exactly what has been burning a hole my brain. It’s one thing to go down but what about back up? In my instance going down my steep short driveway has been a real pucker factor.

 

[Charles scozzari]

The bright side of a basement shop is your always warm, nobody just comes by to waste your time and its cool in the summer. When I thought that I finally had her agreement to move I bought a used 3500 lb. cap. gasoline powered 4 cylinder TMC fork lift. for $1.500 to make it easier to load the machines onto my sons flatbed since my situation had no steps to deal with, then my daughter in law got pregnant and that was the end of moving to Pa. I must say, the fork lift is worth its weight in gold. If you know your going to move look for a used fork lift. When you think about it moving all the canbinets, crates, steel, tooling, smaller tools, work benches is just as much as getting the mill and lathe up and out. If you do have a fork lift you can strap all the smaller things to a skid. No matter what it won't be easy........I threw some pictures up to make Dave jealous.

 

[mmcmdl]

The bright side of a basement shop is your always warm, nobody just comes by to waste your time and its cool in the summer.

AMEN to that ! ( although I still had people coming by to waste my time )

 

[davidpbest]

My shop is also in a basement. This is the rainy equipment delivery day when I moved into the home in 2011.



I built a separate bulkhead entrance without stairs to bring equipment and materials in/out of the basement:



Shop tour video is here.

It's really nice to have the shop at the bottom of the stairs.

 

[projectnut]

I couldn’t imagine having my shop in a basement. Unless custom built walk in level 12’ ceilings and would have to have a ventilation system and air scrubber. My wife would kill me. The walk from the garage to the house is where all the chips fall.
My question is has anyone moved a shop OUT of the basement and what’s your thoughts after that. I dread moving because of the weight of everything in my garage. If I had to move it out of a basement. I’m dying there!!

About the only tools I don't use in the shop are a welder or cutting torch. There's a 9' ceiling, and a dedicated exhaust fan with an inlet port over each of the larger machines. I've been making parts and assemblies large enough that they have to be taken up the stairs by 2 and sometimes 3 people. As for moving machines back up the stairs that's what rigging companies and movers are for. With the 1750 lb. stair climber dolly even the largest machines only have to be partially disassembled to go back up. The staircase has been reinforced and will easily handle a 3,000 lb. load.
The company I worked for regularly moved complete production lines in and out of buildings as high as 8 stories. In some cases, the only way to move a 50,000 lb. machine from one floor to another, or in and out of a building was to sling it under a freight elevator. With the right equipment, and knowledge learned from 20+ years of machine building and installations you can find a way to move almost anything.

As for moving equipment in and out of the garage I decided I'd rather build a machine to do it rather than buy one. To that end I bought a set of plans for a "Cadtrac" online. I didn't much care for what I saw so i spent 6 months redrawing it to my specifications. It took nearly 5 years in my spare time to complete the machine including an end loader bucket, a set of forks that could handle 1,500 lbs., a scraper/snowplow, and a log splitter. Whenever I need to move something heavy, I just put on the forks, fire it up and go to work.

Here are a few pictures of the machine with the forks, bucket, log splitter, and plow:

 

[Charles scozzari]

David, do you get much sleep ??????????? Absolutely beautiful, very well planed and executed. Charlie