SpudFiles

Hey guys, well Im pretty well settled into my dorm now so Im considering bringing in atleast my sherline lathe, maybe my mill too. My school does have a decent machine shop but they have lots of rules and prefer that it is only used for school projects so it would be nice having my lathe for simple projects and maybe a bit of pen turning.

Now I dont think this would be a problem in a single dorm as you could just put the lathe where you have room, machine and clean when you are finished. However, I live in a triple so I have to be somewhat considerate of my two other roommates, to make matters worse the dorm is carpeted so chip collection will be very important.

At first I was thinking I could just get a shop vac and mount it in a way that it would collect chips while I machine but this would be even louder than the lathe and would get quite annoying. So right now my plan is to take my basically unused closet, put a small desk with my lathe mounted inside, and have a plastic "net" that opens up when I open the doors. This way all the mess should be contained inside the closet and I can accumulate quite a few chips before I need to vacuum. The plastic should also help keep any chips from getting into the carpet.

Any input on this idea or a better one would be great.

heres my dorm


and a picture of the closet

Are you thinking of putting a lathe and mill in your bed room and use it there??
The metal dust is really bad to health!

A similar sized tub with one long side cut away makes a good chip guard you can even use the portion you cut away to extend the back higher.

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Well if you only put the lathe in, and it's an 8 inch, then you could kick out the air con, add a shelf, put in some flyscreen, and you'd be set.

To add onto SB's comments, if you remove the doors, replace them with three doors that are the size of the closet. Two are attached to the closet, the other one hinges off one of the other doors. Then you could brace the two doors attached to the closet so they won't close, and the last door is the entry.

SpudBlaster15 wrote:

clean and compact machining

Well, based on those two pictures of your dorm, you don't appear to be too concerned with cleanliness and organization.

hahah Im not concerned, but my roommate on the left (you cant see the picture) has already written a long list of "cleanliness suggestions" for me and other roommate.

jrrdw, sounds like a good plan Ill keep my eyes out.

Sounds like a bit of a tall order especially with the carpet but I can very much sympathise with the imperative to have your machines handy

Some interesting compact workshops on the sherline site: http://www.sherline.com/shops.htm

wyz2285 wrote:Are you thinking of putting a lathe and mill in your bed room and use it there??
The metal dust is really bad to health!

Where do you think I keep mine

Unless you're grinding there isn't really any dust generated.

I know jsr, Im having lathe withdrawals.

How far are you from home? I lived in a triple my first year and if someone had brought in a lathe I think even more of their stuff would have been super glued to the walls. I wouldn't recommend it. A triple is cramped as it is and having someone in there milling stuff would be ridiculous lol.

I would try and get friendly with a professor in direct ties with the machine shop - or try and join a research group and get a small office/cubicle of your own. Leave the living spaces for living - they will get cramped enough as it is lol.

My first year I was the asshole - I had 4 ported 12" sub boxes, 8 surround sound speaker suspended from the ceiling and 3 full sized bikes - all in a double room lol. It was ridiculous and my roommate was not too fond of it. The speaker system was so loud, I once got a girl in the room directly above me on the next floor a noise citation because her neighbors were complaining. Case in point don't be "that guy" lol

I'm all for machining at school though, I'm sure if you got to know the machinist a little better they would let you in to do your own stuff - alot of time they have "assistants" too or basically paid students to run and clean machines. get buddy buddy with them and you'll be fine.

My first year I made custom suspension tuning valves for my race bike's forks, and I did it all in my free time when the shop wasn't busy. Just be nice and don't get in any of the seniors working on their projects way - they are WAYYYYY more under the gun than you are with your leisure projects. Chances are the machines in the shop are a little better than your own, and they should also have many more pieces of tooling you could use.

Last year I worked in the machine shop quite a lot working with the machinist to better learn a new CAM program for cnc work (5 axis control).

wyz2285 wrote:Are you thinking of putting a lathe and mill in your bed room and use it there??
The metal dust is really bad to health!

just sleep with a dust mask on

mobile chernobyl wrote:The speaker system was so loud, I once got a girl in the room directly above me [...]

That didn't quite head where I expected it to, perhaps for the better

Vibrations from huge speakers + girls = ...

MrCrowley wrote:

mobile chernobyl wrote:The speaker system was so loud, I once got a girl in the room directly above me [...]

That didn't quite head where I expected it to, perhaps for the better

NSFW: My thoughts EXACTLY!



Edited by jrrdw.

Does that make me a worse person considering I haven't seen that film but had the same conclusion?

MrCrowley wrote:Does that make me a worse person

If only just to make me look better by comparison, yes