Questions about noise levels in a very small shop.

G

G Jones

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Hello everyone!

I posted here a couple months ago and asked some questions about setting up a little machine shop on a very tight budget. I got lots of great advice, but I had to wait a few months before getting going.

So now im here. Im ready. I have questions!
Essentialy my entire shop is a 4' by 8' space in my SRO (single room occupancy; basically low income housing/disabled housing where my bedroom/kitchen/shop is one space).

Now, although my walls are very sound proofed, and ill mostly either be working with hand tools or very small machines like a taig lathe, a watchmakers lathe, etc, I'd really like to include some sound damping into my bench design. For my benchtop I've ripped a 3' deep section of a solid wood door, very solid, very heavy. Would it be worth it to sandwich some construction foam to the underside in order to reduce vibration? Im also planning to put down rubber mats for the floor area, not only for sound damping, but also to protect the extant floor as well as for ease of cleanup.

Another idea ive been tinkering with is going with an oldschool treadle/flywheel power supply instead of motors. I find the idea of pulley and man powered tools fascinating.

Any ideas would be very much appreciated!
I'm looking forward to finally cutting some metal and spending some time here.

Cheers!
 
If you want to dampen sound in your benchtop you need to reduce vibrations. The construction foam won't really do much of that. You would need to isolate the bench top from the legs. Kind of like a motor mount for a car. I'd look at hockey pucks between the tops of the legs and bottom of the top. Don't just run the hardware through it from tops to legs but attach the legs using 1 set of connectors and the top using another so there is no direct link between the 2. You really don't need to worry much about the top lifting off under use so simple studs would give you lateral stops and also dampen any vibrations being transmitted to the legs and then the floor.
 
My idea was solid top - construction foam layer - plywood layer. My thinking was that constrained layer damping would kill most of the higher frequency vibrations. I'm trying to think back to my hobby of designing turntable bases, but I guess machines are working with a much lower frequency spectrum?

I like your idea of decoupling the top.

Would tossing a couple bags of sand on a lower shelf attached to the legs add damping and reduce the chance of the lower part wanting to vibrate? I cant bolt the table to the floor, which I know can be helpful with ridged benches.
 
I suggest you just put rubber feet under the piece of wood your lathe is mounted on. That will be more than enough to isolate the lathe from the table its on and keep noise minimized. My Sherline is mounted like this and is amazingly quiet. The wood keeps the lathe level and stable and the feet eliminate most noise.
 
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Maybe put a hockey puck (or something softer) between each vertical joint in your system- under the lathe feet, table to legs, and legs to floor. Also, for damping vibration, there's no substitute for mass!

I think you were on the right track with the foam board, but that stuff is hard and stiff. To acoustically decouple and isolate is a good idea, but something more like rubber may work better.
 
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