Musings on building a workshop and a new machine...

[irving2008]

Designing this workshop is as bad as designing a CNC machine, so many ways to do the same thing...

So anyway, I'm reviewing the internal heights and decided it would be beneficial to have the higher side at the back, so I can lift the head on the mill and still get the drawbar out... plus I don't need the headroom over the bench. But that means having the guttering at the front, which isnt so aesthetic but I can live with it. I can't see any negative reason not to have the slope to the front, in fact that way round it possibly makes the building less obtrusive. Also going to bring the purlins directly onto the wall plate at the front, saves effort and only loses 20mm height over the workbench, and makes the fascia smaller, again less obtrusive.

It also means I can run the gutter into a water butt which overflows into a soakaway (there's no room behind for a water butt, only a small soakaway). That potentially gives me a reservoir of cooling water for the future (after filtering). I considered running a cold water feed from the nearby outside tap so I can make tea ;) tho I'd like a sink and a water bath for PCB etching/cleaning but you can't let that run into a soakaway so no washing facilities. (also starting to get dangerously close to 'permanent' and planning permissions).