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I've been through multiple iterations of the garage shop and learned a lot of lessons. Themes that others might find helpful: 0. Build in little phases over time. Developing a shop is not a big expensive one-time task. Just bite off little chunks and you'll develop an incredibly useful shop over time. It's taken me many years to gradually arrive at my current setup. 1. I was losing a lot of time to setup/breakdown. This would cause me to delay dragging out my stuff because I didn't want to lose the parking space. Or, once everything was dragged out, I'd leave it out for weeks while my truck sat outside. Streamlining my setup/breakdown overhead drastically improved my garage shop experience. I'm far more willing to run out and use the space for a quick task nowadays. 2. Build all work surfaces to a universal height. My shop table surface can double as an in-feed/out-feed surface for my table saw. Both of those match the height of my jointer, planer and miter saw. Granted, the rolling cart tops may have various heights so the tools end up at the same level, but carts without mounted tools are also designed to match my standard work surface height. Due to 'variability' of my construction skills, surfaces that might double as in/out-feed areas are targeted to be ~1/8" below the tool surfaces. It's easier to shim up with some sheet material if necessary (it's usually not necessary) than to have a piece hang up during out-feed. 3. Everything rolls. I lose about 6 vertical inches of storage to casters, but the ability to rearrange my shop on the fly is huge. All of the carts are stored along one long edge of the garage but can be quickly pulled out and used as need, rearranged if needed and put away quickly. Nothing is permanently mounted anywhere. 4. Overhead retractable power cords! I wasted so much time dragging extension cords, stepping over cords and coiling cords. Mounted a couple of retractable power cords to the ceiling and it is SO NICE to roll out my miter saw, pull down a power cord, connect and go. I could go on and on since I've studied this problem space for so many years. The main thing is take gradual steps, observe what works, what doesn't and keep refactoring.

@JohnnyG2573

2 жыл бұрын

Wow, that was really valuable knowledge - thanks for sharing!

@ClipsByMiles

2 жыл бұрын

Putting everything on wheels is really the number one tip in here. Being able to use your space flexibly while maintaining the ability to pack things away is invaluable.

@raidengl

2 жыл бұрын

I like the castors concept in theory but not in my personal execution experience. My budget for castors is very small. So I put on my router table and table saw two non locking and two locking. Nearly every time I used them the tool would begin to move mid pushing the piece through. Obviously that's no bueno. I know that there are add on systems that would allow me to raise and lower the tool for moving. But again the very small castors budget.

@nubreed13

2 жыл бұрын

If you can Invest in a good compressor and then plumb it into the shop. It doesn't need to be fancy most of it can be built from copper or black iron pipes. Its so useful to have an air supply where you need it instead of dragging a compressor everywhere

Regarding planned obsolescence, watch Big Clive's stuff about LED lighting - the manufacturers very finely ride a knife edge of overdriving the system enough that it will die in a couple of years so you'll have to buy more from them, but not so much that it dies right away and you think the stuff's not as good as previous tech. There is usually a pair of strangely specific-valued resistors wired in parallel to achieve exactly the right level of overdrive they're looking for. Just clipping out one of the two is generally sufficient to cut back enough current that you hardly lose any light but gain years of service.

My advice on building a shop in a garage is to plan out your electrical before you get too far into it. It's far easier to install extra outlets and reroute your home runs or add circuits when the walls are open or bare than when there is four feet deep storage and work surfaces.

@murasaki848

2 жыл бұрын

I second this. Also, my philosophy is never bother just putting in one duplex. Anywhere. Ever. In nearly every space you could mount a 4x2 box you can mount a 4x4 box, spend six bucks more for another duplex, and make your life better.

@benzone3711

2 жыл бұрын

You are correct

@nubreed13

2 жыл бұрын

Yeah you can never have too many outlets.

@HairyBottom

2 жыл бұрын

Electrical, air, and vacuum.

@robertpeacock1635

2 жыл бұрын

I came here to say to plan your maximum needs in electrical, air, and vacuum then double it. To borrow a phrase from preppers, "Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it". Depending on where your shop is, make sure you have adequate heating, cooling, and humidifier/dehumidifier.

"The Fire" chapter should just be, "There was no fire." and move on. It should also be the 13th chapter in biography.

@Guardian_Arias

2 жыл бұрын

More like "Any fire I did start by accident was mostly expected and for the sake of busting a myth although not always entirely to the magnitude where my eyebrows would suffer and jeopardize my planned date for that afternoon"

@comfortablynumb9342

2 жыл бұрын

"Should be"...

@intent2modulate

2 жыл бұрын

Agreed. Also, I'm getting a Miss Zarves vibe from this.

OMG!!! I cannot agree more about the lighting. When I had my last shop I had somewhere between 8 and a dozen 48" shop lights with 5000k daylight bulbs in a relatively small space. It made all of the difference. True colors, no shadows when working and no worries about if I was missing something.

@michaelgraziano8038

2 жыл бұрын

Spring for the high CRI lamps too if you're doing anything that needs color accuracy. You don't want to finish your project, roll it out into the sun, and realize the colors are screwy.

I've been working in a RV garage out in the desert for the past three years and now I'm moving my woodworking shop to a smaller garage in the Pacific Northwest. Here's my experience in both climates. - Lighting is a must, but it's not enough to have a lot of lighting, it needs to be placed correctly. If you're standing at your workbench or at a power tool like a lathe and your hands are in your shadow, that's bad lighting no matter how much lighting there is. Task lighting can help. The adjustable drafting-table style lights from the office supply dealer are great for task lighting. You can put the mounting peg in a dog hole in your bench or use a mic stand to keep them out of the way. I've also used the small clip-on shop lights from the home center and just removed the spring-clips, hanging them from their cord like you would over a kitchen island. - Moisture is a killer. Out in the desert I had the luxury of not working about the damp, but the dryness sent things the other direction, which is murder on wood and some other materials that move with the ambient humidity changes. The garage door in the PNW will need to be hardened as best I can against moisture infiltration without losing use of the door since my wife still wants to park in half the space. (Sigh) A dehumidifier will be added by the next rainy season... which is (looks at watch) an hour from now I think. - Keep large power tools mobile. Bandsaws, jointers, drill presses, table saws, even lathes can be put on either heavy-duty multi-axis locking casters (when they're locked they don't roll or spin) or one of any of the mobile bases sold specifically for making your heavy tools mobile. Pay close attention to the weight limits of your rolling arrangement and look up the ship weight of the tools you want to move with them. Don't over-tax your casters or you'll wish you hadn't. - Keep workstations mobile if you can. Being able to pull your workbench out away from the wall and into the middle of the space gives you better/more options for clamping, gluing, working on all faces of your build. - Workbench height is a whole Thing, especially for woodworkers, but if you have a worktable the same height as the decks of your large stock-processing machines, you can use it as an outfeed table and save yourself a lot of headaches. Especially if you process a lot of sheet goods like plywood. - Don't neglect dust and debris management. Even if you have a large shop vac that you roll from station to station to handle dust or fumes, have a plan to keep your lungs young. - Heavy-duty material storage will always be needed in any sort of shop. The rolling racks I've always bought from restaurant suppliers -- the shiny chrome wire racks that are usually already on wheels -- have an astonishing per-shelf weight rating and are worth every penny and can pretty easily move out of the way. 2x4 shelving is relatively cheap, but not as easy to get out of the way if you need to get something past it.

@nubreed13

2 жыл бұрын

One thing I will add is don't buy casters from home Depot. Buy them from an industrial supplier they will usually cost the same but have better build quality. And make sure the capacity is at least double what the machinery weighs because I've had casters daily even at that level.

@nubreed13

2 жыл бұрын

Having a shop in the Pacific Northwest is tough. I have to store my lumber in my house to keep the humidity down. It's a constant battle to keep my material from warping and it takes longer in the winter for glue to dry since it's wet all the time.

@6:30 - one of the biggest reasons for boards failing is the cheap capacitors used (either barely spec'd for the power running thru it, or just poor quality electrolytic caps!)... Very cheap upgrade to better ones often, but if you're building down to a price then it's stuff like that which gets cut as they'll last long enough to not be a warranty repair or return.

@danielabrams555

2 жыл бұрын

That has also been my experience. I have had several similar LED lights fail after a year or two. All of them were fixed by replacing capacitors.

@bryan__m

Жыл бұрын

No, Adam said they hire engineers just to figure out how to make things stop working. That's way more believable than "they cheaped out on a part to keep the cost down in the admittedly cheapo light fixture".

Setting up a garage shop is a satisfying and never ending process. I bought my house over a dozen years ago and my garage has slowly morphed into an amazingly functional and pleasant space for me to spend my time. Every time I thought I had no more room to add something I was able to reorganize and make it work. If I were to list the equipment I have in a 2-car garage you probably wouldn't believe it. I wouldn't have myself a decade ago. And it's all accessible and functional. But it's always in flux and I rearrange continuously as I find a better way. But Adam is on the money with lighting. Put up lights, lots of lights. And when you think it is well lit add a few more! Haha!

In addition to common capacitor & semiconductor failures, Lead(Pb) free solders that are tin based can grow whiskers over time that creates unwanted short circuits.

I’m a bachelor, I’ve turned most of my house into my workshop 👍 but I still weld outside

@bsodmike

2 жыл бұрын

Totally the way to go!! I’m mainly into the CAD / electronics side but I so need a machine workshop. Totally want to run my own CNC. Soon, I hope!!

Planned obsolescence is rarely engineered into something. It's usually just the result of cost-cutting. With LED's, I would guess the main problem is skimping on the heat sink. Without proper cooling, those puppies are going to eventually cook themselves. The real marvel of engineering was designing, manufacturing, and getting that light to you for $30.

@markhamilton7059

2 жыл бұрын

Oh yeah, cost cutting is the real issue. I spent 40 years as an engineer and I can tell you that accountants are usually the final decision makers in a design process.

@gorak9000

2 жыл бұрын

95% of the time what fails in an LED light is the output electrolytic capacitor in the power supply. The cheap garbage parts they use probably cost $0.30, and a good name brand capacitor costs $1. If you spend the $1 to buy a good part, open the light up and replace the failed $0.30 garbage part, the light will work again and last for years and years. If you throw the whole light out and go buy a new one for another $30, that one will also crap out in a year or 2, and you'll be in an endless cycle of buying $30 lights that last 2 years. The other 5% of the time, they've just pushed the LEDs in the light too hard (beyond their spec) and they died. In that case, it's not worth it to fix it, just go buy a better light.

The answer to the obsolescence question is it isn't a planned thing: it's (likely) the result of moving from lead solder to tin bismuth solder, which is requires much higher oven temps in production and is susceptible to "tin whiskers" which develop over time and short things out when the whiskers grow together. Something newer called Low Temperature Solder is making it's way though the electronics industry - a slight variation on the formula of the solder combined with a very specific but lower temperature profile during the soldering process. Lead was a great solder, but obviously terrible for the world, so part of the "They don't make it like they used to" thing is death of lead in things like circuit boards. Cheers! (Love this channel btw - has been a great companion during lockdown)

@wobblysauce

2 жыл бұрын

Yep, and a quick going over and bam... most things work again from just a dry joint.

@Dianaolympos

2 жыл бұрын

This, and capacitors. Caps get expensive really quickly when they get rated for higher temp (and so longer time) and it is not rare that your capacitors are the first thing to crap out. The sad reality is that they get so expensive so fast that you would probably not buy the thing if we used highly rated one that would last that long. I am not joking. It is really that expensive.

@mm9773

2 жыл бұрын

Planned obsolescence exists, but it’s rare. Always interesting to see people so easily convinced that it’s an evil masterplan, when most of the time it’s to do with cheap components that manufacturers go for because it’s all a big race to the bottom: if you sell a lamp and you’re not famous for your product design, you have to compete on price, it’s that simple. It’s lose-lose-lose: manufacturers make little money, customers end up with terrible products, and we create tons of waste in the process. There’s an expensive high end and a cheap low end, and if you want a decent product for a decent price, you’ll have to do a ton of research. And planned obsolescence does occur too, for instance in decent quality drills that have an inexplicably shitty switch/trigger built in. Some of those are designed to fail, there’s no other logical explanation.

@fubzuluz1108

2 жыл бұрын

+1 to what people say here. This most probably isn't "planned obsolescence" but rather people trying to optimize for cost, at the expense of adding some safety margin. Electronic component do go bad, even if there are no visible "moving parts", especially if they are driven close to their specification. That's why engineers used to add some tolerances (so that components are at 80% of their specs for example), but the demand for cheap stuff is just to high :( PS. Love your channel!

@leeh9420

2 жыл бұрын

​@@fubzuluz1108 I think what Adam is remembering the old days of lead solder that meant electronics were far more durable/enduring than most stuff today (not saying your wrong so much as that's the answer to a slightly different question). :)

Another thing to add on top of the cheap capacitors killing boards for LEDs is metal whiskering which is intensified by the boards cycles and thermally induced stress. This is particularly notable in tin based solders. The result is short circuits when these whiskers connect

Wheels are crucial in a garage shop- every tool and workbench needs to be easily moveable (but also designed to be stationary when needed!)

I tried to make a light up Arc Reactor thing out of random trash I found in my garage for a Halloween thing we were doing for Band and it did it's job perfectly during the event. From under my shirt it looked like an actual arc reactor and it was so cool. I took it home that night and wanted to make improvements like keeping it cooler, less battery power, etc. I turned it on before I did anything to it and the entire thing just burst into flames for about a quarter of a second before expending all the oxygen in it and dying down. It was the first real prop sort of thing I made and ever since I've been making random crap from stuff my family tries to throw away. My hope is that that is my "fire chapter" and it doesn't expand. I also wanna say that this channel is awesome and really an inspiration for me. It helps me know that there are other weirdos like me who like to make this sort of stuff... Not to mention Adam Savage is pretty great :)

As someone who's been a part of LED lighting design in medical devices; the art of making an LED supply that doesn't fail in a few years is not trivial. The expansion, contraction, and vibration due to the thermal fluctuations from all the power running through them is often the culprit. Sometimes chemical breakdowns as well; often in capacitors. Many part ratings are specced in such a way that they only give you when the part has a 50/50 chance of failure. Even if they have better data, it's generally not exactly what you need to ensure a long-lived device. If you want to instead ensure you reach 6-sigma levels of quality, the amount of work required to ensure your components will last that long is pretty hefty. Not to mention, it often involves over-designing your power circuitry in ways that often only a medical (or military) device could afford. This is one reason why such things cost so much more. Because you're sure no one gets a board that fails in a couple years. Military devices especially are notorious for being over-specified (and often underspecified at the same time). In the commercial market, most tend to expect 1/1000 or so failures, or whatever their metric is depending on industry and product, and to deal with the angry customers when they come. The real genius is figuring out how to design a robust board that will not fail, without adding tons of cost.

Planned obsolescence is the greatest example of the ne’er-do-well’s hand-wringing. Plot thickens, gears turn, and it’s all gravy, baby.

Your Q&A are somehow always relevant to situations I find myself in while working from home. Your videos are therapeutic for me, please don't ever stop

@Games_and_Music

2 жыл бұрын

I guess you're in California, which seems to be one of the last Western places to still be concerned about covid. Here in Holland we've been back to the old ways for a couple of months now and things are fine, they're improving actually. If your post was not relating to covid, then ignore what i said, and i wish you the best.

Personally, with any workshop planning - make it as easy to change around as you can. While everyone seems to look for that "perfect" layout/design - it doesn't exist. What suits you now, probably won't work for you in 2, 5, or even 10 yrs time. So bank on changing things up to suit your collection of tools, stock etc. What I've found over the years is put things on wheels so they're easy to move. Make cabinets modular and multiples of a base dimension (so you can put multiple units together to form a bigger unit). And if that doesn't work for you - reconfigure it to suit. Make them with combinations of drawers and doors - being modular it's easy to reconfigure if you need more of one type (drawers or doors). As for electrical - have plug sockets installed for lights instead of hard wiring the lights in. A lot of fluoro or LED lights now come with plugs so that makes it easier to move or add if you need to. I wouldn't be too concerned with power points because again, if you decide to move things around then your hard wired ones could be in the wrong place. Instead pick some strategic points to hard wire and then run a 4 or 6 outlet power point extension cord from those (the ones that are space 1.5/2m between points). Makes it easy if you decide to move you work bench or a tool. Although if you're going to run 3-phase tools, that's a whole other kettle of fish.

Well if there is only one chapter titled "The Fire" im happy it happened before i was 10 years old, from trying to understand how a cigarette lighter worked in my uncles brand new car to trying to write an entire sentence with gasoline and panicking as the fire front made its way to the can. I at least did have the fore thought to have a pre-pressurized hose nearby. But because of those experiences I do have a consistent habit of visualizing the worst case scenario possible in my shop any time in doing something no matter how often I do a specific tasks and a dry run to go with it too.

Lighting, I had a shop earlier in life and made things like custom rifle stocks. I checkered the stocks and had to use incident light sources in order to see the peaks of the diamonds. Otherwise, I had lots of natural light fluorescent fixtures to see what I was doing on the mill or lathe. In an average two car garage one can fit a lathe, a mill, bead blasting cabinet and an hydraulic press. I also had an outbuilding for wood sawing, planning/jointing and sanding. My compressor was attached to this building and again lots of lights.

Lighting is incredibly important, I recently upgraded my step-fathers workshop from just 1 piddly wee light in the middle, to 6 lights strategically spread out around the room. He use to wear a head-torch while using the lathe so it now has a suspended light you can adjust directly above it, both the workbenches have their own lights, it just makes things so much easier.

5:57 that scared the crap out of me! :D looks like the joints are giving out!

Thank you for mentioning the HOA obstacle. I've only been marginally affected by them in the past, but have had multiple friends become evicted due to their shops and hobbies. I actively avoided HOAs when looking for my current home. They can be a massive hinderance to freedom and expression on your own property.

Hey Adam, as someone who works in the electronics manufacturing industry, one of the reason circuit boards can fail over time is due to solder creep and not planned obsolescence. If a solder joint isn't good (and also depending on the type of solder used), there is a potential for solder to slowly grow over time (creep). Given enough time there is a good chance that the solder creep will touch another connection it wasn't meant to and you get a failure. I will say, in most cases if a failure were to happen due to a poor solder joint, it will happen within a year. That is definitely not a hard and fast rule though, but it is part of the reason why you normally get a 1 year manufacturer warranty on most electronics.

@wesmatchett615

2 жыл бұрын

In addition, circuit boards can degrade due to dust and oxidation. Both are often a problem in workshop environments.

@gorak9000

2 жыл бұрын

@@wesmatchett615 I have never seen a circuit board "degrade" because of dust - wtf kind of circuit boards are you using??

@gorak9000

2 жыл бұрын

It's never the board that fails, it's the cheap chinesium electrolytic capacitors they use in the power supplies. They save a few cents on every unit, plus they're guaranteed to fail in a year or 2, so you'll buy another light. If you replace the caps with good name brand ones (that cost about $1), practically any LED driver will last forever.

@Nebby_99

2 жыл бұрын

Planned obsolescence isn't always an explicit part of a design spec. Sometimes it's just how they manage the trade off between quality control and cost. They'll think it's okay if it fails after a year, if it means they can use cheaper caps or have more lax QC on the solder joints.

Good to hear that TIG welding has filtered to the top of the priority list. So far this valuable skill has eluded me, I will be watching your journey into TIG with great interest.

Dive into Tig for sure Adam, it’s a game changer! And the best KZread resource by far is Jody Collier’s ‘Welding Tips and Tricks’. The man is a genius. Another game changer - Japanese ‘Vessel’ screwdriver with JIS tips and wood composite handles. Highly recommend.

Speaking of a garage shop. Build your own stuff. I built my own Shelves and worktable. Also check pawnshops for supplies. I just got a $700 old craftsman tool chest for $250 in near perfect condition. Tarps/Heat blankets, hang them up to ensure you don't catch your house on fire. Edit: if you need an anvil, find some junked railroad track and build one. A good store bought anvil can cost thousands, but a junked track can be free.99

@markhamilton7059

2 жыл бұрын

Estate sales are great for tools and equipment.

@kennethelwell8574

2 жыл бұрын

Or don't build your own stuff, at least not right away. It's a bit of Adam's philosophy of begin with something serviceable, then upgrade once you know better what it is that you need. There's also a huge chicken and egg, rabbit hole to go down, to have a workshop to build things for your workshop, which is fine... but not at the expense of the original hobby/business purpose of the shop. You will discover your ways of working, and methods of organization, that might lead to creative custom solutions. There is SO much off-the-shelf shop infrastructure stuff out there now.

@TactiClaus

2 жыл бұрын

@@kennethelwell8574 my point is about value. I spent an hour and about $60 building my own workbench, which is a MUCH better value than spending hundreds on a smaller pre-built one.

My shop / KZread studio is in my garage. In the summer it gets very hot and very cold in the winter. At least in the summer I can open the big door when I'm not filming. Since I'm filming in there I have 4 100 watt lights on my work area plus the one bulb in the ceiling fixture.

Adam. I would love to see you do a video series of you learning to TIG.

@gorak9000

2 жыл бұрын

Just go directly to the source, and watch This Old Tony's videos on TIG

For lighting I tore apart some older LED backlit TVs and used the LED strips from them. For power I am using two older 24v DC printer power bricks. Works very well and I already had the stuff so it cost nothing but some time with my soldering iron.

I have a theory about lighting in relation to accomplishing work. The more light you have, the easier it is to accomplish a task. So... if you add enough light fast enough (read: dynamite), the work practically accomplishes itself!

@Games_and_Music

2 жыл бұрын

I had a bright idea and my mind was blown!

Super, super agree with lighting. Just getting proper task lighting on just your normal desk is a let better for making anything.

Totally off topic: I just introduced my 4 year old grandson to Mythbusters, and he loves it. He walks around telling us "Remember - don't try this at home...We're what you call experts!" Every time he comes over, he asks to put it on. And when I ask him which Mythbuster he wants to be when he grows up, it's Adam. You're helping me set him on an early path toward good science, rational thinking and (of course) blowing stuff up. So thanks man!

Great Adam, Thanks!

I have a single car garage shop and I found it a bit small to do what I need but I have learned some things that really helped. 1. Have a place for everything and put those places on wheels! Put castors on everything, workbenches, storage, bandsaws, table saws, tool chests, drawers... everything. You can hide sheet materials behind things, you can reconfigure your space for long thin pieces or wide awkward shapes and you can simply move things to sweep. Watch Adam's tool cart video for inspiration here. 2. Think about waste early. Offcuts and rubbish build up quickly when you work and make the space feel small. Get shop bins that you can put next to your work space then have wheely bins (outside the shop ideally). 3. If you have space outside the garage get a pop up gazebo and a trestle table. This setup doubles your space, gives you 360 degree access to your work, has great lighting, protects you, your tools and your work from the sun and rain and it can be left up for as long as your project requires.

Hi Adam, With regards to LEDs stopping working what you are referring to typically is the inverter section where it rectifies 240vac (or 110vac in the US) down to typically 12vdc. To keep the size small, it would be a Switch mode PSU and these use a decent number of capacitors. Electrolytic caps are probably 90% the cause of failure in modern electronics. Also cheap components, will last least compared to quality components (say Japanese Nichicon caps) etc.

@bsodmike

2 жыл бұрын

Older “wall warts” use a simple transformer, FWBR (full-wave bridge rectifier) a MOV or NTC as a short-circuit protector (in-rush current limiter), a simple fuse and a typically a 22uF 400V 105DegC smoothing electrolytic cap. This design is great (imho) as they are simple to repair, usually single point of failure (if the FWBR didoes have been rated correctly), BUT they are not as efficient as their SMPS counterparts. Nowadays we strive to be more efficient, smaller packaging for PSUs, but the cost is these bits of “efficient” electronics will cost the end user more in the long run. But hey, at least we are trying to save the planet? No, not really. Google how much energy has been spent just on Crypto mining in the last few years. Sure, the end users electricity bill will be slightly lower, but they will 1) spend more on replacing dead PSUs and 2) take comfort in the fallacy that we are helping the planet.

My biggest garage/shop problem is dealing with water from the cars because it tends to spread from wall to wall and soak into everything... My best winter garage hack is to caulk down thresholds for sealing an overhead door and make a "swim lane" around your parking spot to direct snow-melt water out the door.

TIG welding is fun and relaxing. It’s almost therapeutic. Heat, drip, work. Heat, drip, work. Lather, rinse, repeat! 😉👍

Building a shop? Paint the walls white. Sounds weird, but it is so much more satisfying than raw cinder blocks or whatever else. Plus, it reflects light, which helps eliminate dark spots and shadows. My shop is so bright, my pale blue eyed (vampire?) girlfriend doesn't like to come in there.

Yeah, TIG welding is on my list as well!

Big Clive goes into that (about planned obsolescence) in this video the Dubai lamp, it's to do with power factors and running too much power through the LEDs and they burn out early.

The first thing, anyone should purchase when they are still thinking about putting a shop in their home, is a fire extinguisher. I have needed to use mine twice now in almost 15 years. It is absolutely invaluable.

First question for setting up a garage shop is what do you want to work on in it. If you want to do foam costume making, vs electronics, vs basic carpentry, vs metalworking, they are all vastly different focuses in tools, work space, safety measures, etc. Lighting is pretty universally needed though

Yay for This Old Tony plug!

Planned obsolescence can get even weirder: A piece of electronics sitting on a shelf worked the last time it was used, then plug it in again a few months later and it doesn't work. Didn't even have a local power supply heating it up. The shelf it was on was in an air conditioned room. That requires mega ingenuity :-).

@gorak9000

2 жыл бұрын

There's really only one electronic component that "ages" while it sits, regardless if it's on or not - wet electrolyte electrolytic capacitors, and nearly every electronic device uses many of them. They use the absolute garbage bottom of the barrel parts, and they fail no matter what. The seals they use are crap, and they leak and let the electrolyte dry out or leak out. I would say 90% of electronic failures are due to failing caps in the power supply. There are also old tantalum capacitors that can fail randomly even just while they're sitting to, but they tend to go short, and when you turn the thing on, you get a small fireworks display. That issue has mostly been solved now due to better manufacturing of tantalum caps, but it is a common issue in old gear.

Ha! Im in my garage right now pondering how to set up my shop. Best timing.

About TIG- welding. I've been a welder for 15 years and have taught welding to a few people. The experience of learning TIG-welding is most often quite frustrating. Tips and tricks can lead the apprentice only so far, the essential ingredient is repetition and work hours. It's more about muscle memory than knowledge. Once that muscle memory is achieved, mastering the liquid metal flow can be very satisfying.

My advice for garage shop guy is: 1. Get a work bench. I made mine myself with 2x4s and plywood. 2. Get a small toolbox for your bench. 3. Find a project and buy tools as you need them. Before you know it, you will have amassed a repertoire of tools to complete tasks as they come up. Just get started and see where it takes you. I don’t think you can plan it too much.

planned obsolescence for lighting: just make sure the driverboard is in an tiny box with little or no ventialtion, and use cheap capacitors. Most of my lights that have died is capacitors that have popped due to heat or quality. Same with backlighting on monitors and tv's, capacitors that pops in hot areas that are not well ventilated.

Lighting is key, i agree!!!

I'm a plumber and I LOVE tig welding. It's probably my favourite thing to do at work. It's like oxy- acetylene welding but silent and no sparks. I just sit there behind my mask listening to podcasts and just forget about the world around me and focus on welding.

The shout-out for TOT!!! what a great channel!!!!!

I think a series on Tig welding with this old Tony would be awesome!!!

I don't think there is much planned obsolescence in the lights, just the desire to make them always brighter. That means running the LEDs toward or past their limits, for a little extra brightness at the expense of a lot of heat and a lot shorter life. Same for the driver board, though there you often see just poor cooling. Big Clive has a lot of good content on LED lighting

@jhonbus

2 жыл бұрын

This is exactly it. Many of the components are run too hot for them to survive a long time and eventually something gives out. Either one of the semiconductors (could be one of the LED chips itself or a driver chip - those things are built as small as possible because the less silicon, the cheaper.) but often it's something like a capacitor that gives out and means the driver chip can't get enough power to start up. There's no "planned obsolecence" at least as a specific goal, it's just that all commercial products are built down to a price. If they spent twice as much then they could make something that ran nice and cool and would last forever. But unless there's an incentive to do that (eg government of Dubai decreeing that all LED bulbs must have such and such an efficiency and lifespan) then the profit motive of saving money on the design wins out. If that happens to mean that you'll have to buy another one in a couple of years then so much the better, but that's not the main goal. In other words: Don't attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence/mediocrity/stupidity (Take your pick depending on whichever best applies!)

I recently moved my bedroom from the big room to the small room, so I could convert it into a shop...its so much nicer to have the extra room. I do need more lighting though, I get done painting something and it looks fine, till I get more light on it and realize just how bad it looks lol

Adam, I love that wor bib at the end. Is there an episode on that?

Stuff does move. Thermal expansion and contraction, elecromigtation, solid state diffusion. Just because you don’t see anything moving does mot mean there is not movement on a microscopic scale.

As professional tradesman I totally agree with Adam about "The Fire". I've had 3 of them to date. 2 were my fault and 1 was not. Speaking of farming things out I had the fire department put out the one that wasn't my fault.

oh man if you could collab with TOT for some "training" would be awesome, just the thought of how to pull the video off with your face and his hands only would be a fun visual dynamic.

My best suggestion, aside from electicals first, is don’t ever start buying tools and equipment if you can’t also afford the necessary safety equipment to accompany them. And if you wear glasses, that means safety glasses with side shields. For basic outfitting, well stores chuck display shelves and cases like crazy! See one you like, ask a manager when that display is going to be discontinued, and they will be happy to see you drive off with it on the day.

I don't know if it has been mentioned yet ? But another concern about setting up a shop in your garage is the amount of power you have to your garage. I have a detached garage and all I have is a 15 amp breaker running power, now I have a welder. Grinders, table saws and much more, but it's come to the point that I'm going to need a electrician to up my main power box, then run a line to a breaker box to my garage, so I can have power to everything and not have to shut everything down, just to be able to use my miter saw and dust extractor.😢

My stepfather's moment (at least the one that I was around for) was when he built his own replacement for the AC controller in his RV. We'd just landed from a five hour flight when he shoved it at my girlfriend (electrical engineer) and me (electronics tech) and asked us to check it over, but after about a minute of looking at it and his chicken scratch diagram trying to puzzle it out, he got impatient, grabbed it away from us, and stomped out to install it. Unfortunately, girlfriend was standing under the thing when he powered the system up and it caught fire. Hot solder dripped onto her shoulder and she has a scar to this day. Fortunately, it didn't catch the ceiling on fire. As he was rather unapologetic, we quietly walked away from the project altogether. So he made version 2, which didn't work but didn't catch fire. Version 3 finally worked. To this day he brags about how he made his own instead of paying a ridiculous price for a replacement, and never acknowledges it actually cost more, and doesn't remember the fire and injury.

Regarding too much light: my previous workplace installed new LED panels and left in the florescent lights too. It was so bright my eyes hurt for a week while i adjusted.

Speaking of lighting.... this might seem silly to some, but I think it would be so cool have a short little "as I leave the shop" clip so we can see what it looks like as the lights go out switch by switch before it's dark and the tools start to come to life!

Adam. Savage. Welding. Yes, please. Also.. TOT shoutout!

Any recommendations on garage shop cabinet/workbench companies? I’m looking to build out a garage as well.

Running electrolytic capacitors and LEDs at high temperature and hard saves money directly and reduces life. To some extent semiconductors too. It’s not so much planned obsolescence as building to minimum cost to meet especially US mass market buyer’s demands. If they paid 30% more life could be greatly increased, but negotiations are centered on price and maybe warranty return allowance.

@gorak9000

2 жыл бұрын

Heh, someone else that gets it. The main problems with LED lights are the output electrolytic caps in the power supplies, driving 8 LED chips too hard instead of putting 10 LED chips in the design and running them slightly under spec, and saving every last tenth of a penny on the BOM cost in general. It would be SO easy to make an LED light that basically never failed, but then the market for lightbulbs would dry up in a year or 2.

Please make a video with Van Neistat. He worked with Tom sacks and I think you two would make a great colab

Everything looks better in the dark haha. Heading to Home Depot to get better lights now 😅

Something I would worry about with a garage shop depending on where you live is humidity. My garage gets swampy and some tools/parts done like that environment

A few months ago my wife decided I needed a storage cabinet for my shop and I wound up putting my diy Sort-a-mo inside but she really wanted that cabinet so she order a Sam’s club cabinet in stainless and red trim . She can justify it and it is a matches my tool boxes. The coolest thing is this was her idea… or was it?

@bkbinj6320

2 жыл бұрын

Like my wife, it was her idea. She wanted cabinets with doors in my garage/workshop to hide as much of my stuff as possible.

Beautiful

Too much light is light directed directly at your eyes. You can always add light to the work area, but if it shines at your face, your eyes adjust to that, making everything else appear darker. After making sure nothing shines in your eye, have options to move or turn off lights that cast shadows on an oddly shaped critical work area.

in my experience there isn't a specific job for planned obsolescence, rather it's a parameter that needs adhering to in the specifications sent to engineers. before they might have said "design this to still work after ten million thermal cycles" whereas now they might say "it needs to work for one million thermal cycles". they absolutely directly tell you to make things difficult to repair though. i was doing a kitchen appliance once and inspired by hard drive rails i thought "oh i can just use a little two-step stamped bracket to bolt this easily damageable power supply to the case". nope, they didn't want to spend the extra two pennies per unit and the power supplies were secured with two tack welds. there are thousands of these units (whose name and function the nda makes me shush about) in landfills because the power supplies died and couldn't be replaced.

Adam I have always thought you should have an automatic Fure Suppression system or two installed just in case, and the appropriate storage methods

Just curious what companies are manufacturing items specifically for garage shop buildouts?

The failure of LED boards (and boards in general) is not so much planned obsolescence but under spec'ing of components (resistors, capacitors etc) so they run just on or outside their nominal range (usually too hot). As with tools, we keep demanding cheaper and cheaper, so cost rather than quality is the driver ('scuse the pun).

If your shop is small everything needs to be on wheels. Keep the center of the shop clear. Empty space is the biggest resource above all else. Biggest problem I have is that I just don't have the space to do more than one project at a time.

haha, i'm currently building a desk with metal sit stand legs. I had to cut and re-weld it to adjust the height. (setting the scene) tons of sawdust and towels covering parts. So i'm welding the bracket on the lift into it's new place and i stop for a second open my mask so i can see better and im getting this orange flashing light behind me. I turn around and the towel covering the other lift pieces is on fire. and i mean on FIRE! Luckily none of the dust caught fire. only the towel. It managed to burn the control cable for the lift. But i stomped it out as quickly as i could. That was a close one. could of been soo much worse. I had to rewire the controls anyways, so no lose there. I really shouldn't be welding in the garage with all this wood and sawdust everywhere :) Thankfully that's all i need to weld for this project and i can clean out the garage before i try that again. I have a couple yt videos of me fixing the wires that burned.

LED light fixture failures are quite often caused by the short life of electrolytic capacitors when run at higher temperatures. Many electroylitics are only rated at a few thousand hours at their maximum temperature. As a general rule of thumb for every 10C lower the life span is doubled and every 10C higher it is halved. Essentially if they are run at high temperatures their life is quite short compared to most other electronic components. There are also many low quality and or counterfeit electrolytic capacitors being produced that do not perform or last as long as real ones from reputable manufacturers. Additionally thermal design of LED bulbs and light fixtures is generally poor. All of this adds up to high failure rates and shorter life spans than are advertised.

What's the bendy coolant hose called that Adam used for the light stems? Im trying to find an affordable option in Australia and im stumped!

@gorak9000

2 жыл бұрын

lock line

@bushratbeachbum

2 жыл бұрын

@@gorak9000 is that a brand or the general name for it?

Garage shop...I wish! I have a "Dining Shop". I'm a trucker so I just rent an apartment, as much as I'd love to buy a house, no one would be there to take care of it. So? I'm single and don't use a dining room anyway, so I put a bench and my tools in the dining room. I get some odd looks from maintenance, but they have also come asked me to borrow tools....LOL I wish I could post a pic, might help some other poor apartment rat set themselves up. I obviously don't have much for large power tools. But that's not to say I don't have any. And yes, I weld on the back porch fairly often. No one has complained...yet.

I had my first fire today 😅 I was surprised that my welding mask did not switch to transparency. When I then folded it up in amazement, a cleaning rag burned next to me 😂

@gorak9000

2 жыл бұрын

Was it one of those stupid blue shop towels? Those things practically spontaneously combust if you look at them the wrong way. I've never had a fire until I started using blue shop towels, then it's like "ooh, you were grinding something 30 feet away on the driveway? Close enough, on fire" - hate those stupid things. Ok, to be fair, they don't really light on fire, but they smolder and make a TON of smoke.

@Nitrointake

2 жыл бұрын

@@gorak9000 yes and it was COMPLETELY on fire 😂

@gorak9000

2 жыл бұрын

@@Nitrointake Yeah, those things are just evil - I've had 2 or 3 of them start smoldering from grinding or welding, when they're seemingly far away enough to not be an issue. It's always "wtf [snif snif] - yup, f'ing blue shop towel is on fire somewhere AGAIN - where is it this time", and then find it and throw it out on the driveway. They have a distinct smell when they're burning too - almost like burning white printer paper. You can tell just by the smell that it's one of those stupid things. Once I'm done cleaning up the grease and old goo from the old cnc milling machine I'm working on, I will be banning them from my shop (or making sure they are disposed of immediately).

About those lights and pcbs. They just make them using cheapest components possible, and as consequence they slightly overheat all the time and eventually fail.

Lighting and outlets to power everything are everything you can turn off the lights and not use the outlet but it’s better to have it there

Yes the corporate world has a huge issue with planned obsolescence.

I just discovered that Adam looks like one of the Abba's band members! By the way, I love you!!!

Just a question? I'm a watch guy, looks like a seiko Pepsi skx you have their. Are you also a watch lover and would you make a video on your collection and your likes?

...Brother Adam, is there a PO Box we can send things to? - -Thanks, GR

I would say lighting is one of the most important attributes to a good shop, next would be a plethora of power outlets, and then you need to set your shop up for whatever you plan on doing. Are you wood working? Then you will need a dust collector. Are you welding? You need a hood and vent set up. Are you doing automotive collision repair? If so you will want the most light. Tailor your shop to your needs man.

I feel like I remember Adam telling a story about a loft apartment he lived in that there was a fire. A place with a bathtub in the centre of the room? Or maybe it was a flood...

There's DEFFENTLY a H.O.A. chapter !!!!

Yeah, Lego Statler 😀Is there a Waldorf two?

Those boards die like they do because they use cheap board components that generate a lot of heat and don't tolerate said heat well either. Most often they also don't have adequate cooling because the bulbs have to meet very strict packaging requirements to fit in traditional light fixtures and/or traditional sizes/forms of light bulbs. Companies are just trying to make the lights as cheaply as possible and skimp out on the components and cooling. There's a certain planned obsolescence to it, but overall it's more just designing to be as cheap as possible. Technology Connections has some great videos on the topic.

I have a little bit of insight into the planned obsolescence commentary based on my experience working in an R&D lab for a U.S. electronic device manufacturer. Based on what I understand about circuit board classification, I think the premature death of LED lamps probably has more to do with the class it's built to rather than someone or some team taking great pains to plan when the device will fail. A Class 1 PCB will allow for greater variability in the quality of soldered connections and the use of inferior components because the quality standard it must meet is lower than a Class 2 or Class 3 device. IOW, planning for obsolescence could simply be a matter of declaring which product class requirements the device is going to meet in the planning stage of product development; the life span of a particular type of product, based on which class requirements it's built to meet, will likely be a known estimate.

@jimjjewett

2 жыл бұрын

Do some components actually say "not suitable for class 2" or "suitable for class 3", or is it just that the class 3 process ends up inspecting and testing things so much more that you can justify a more expensive component with higher-than-minimum specs, or require a certain supplier?

@uncle_ike

2 жыл бұрын

@@jimjjewett thanks for asking. I see now that I didn't phrase that comment about components very well. Between the different classes of electronic products there are different requirements for circuit boards and solderability (quality of solder joints). While there are different classes of component quality (like mil-spec vs. consumer grade), I don't know if, for example, a super cheap component would be banned in some way for use in a class 3 product (highest requirements for reliability and durability). But it certainly wouldn't make sense to do so. Use of progressively higher quality components seems to follow the class a device is built to meet. That's about the limit of my understanding based on my experience. I'm not an engineer, so I'll let them get into the deeper details. Their $0.02 is probably a more sure bet than mine.

@jimjjewett

2 жыл бұрын

@@uncle_ike Not sure that I'm relieved I haven't missed something so important or sad that it isn't true. It could be useful guidance.

@jimjjewett

2 жыл бұрын

@@uncle_ike Not sure whether to be relieved that I haven't missed such an important part of datasheets, or sad that this isn't a thing, since it could be useful.

THIS OLD TONY!!!

@mikeuk666

2 жыл бұрын

Attention seeking antivax flat earther alert

Hi Adam!

@run4mejc

2 жыл бұрын

Is there more info on your light panels on your workstations??

Where do I get a Mac tool box for $2500 bucks ? My Snapon epic was $16,000. No tools just the box.