At 01:03 PM 9/20/2004, Lawrence Lile wrote:

>I used to have my fume absorber on one swingarm (a converted swing arm lamp and a muffin fan) and a magnifier lamp on another swingarm.  This was handy to get things out of the way, or to an odd soldering position.  

My room air conditioner (on 10 months out of the year) flows right across the bench, so I never built one. 

>I believe that I had over 100 footcandles on my bench, and it was hardly enough.  Those hardware store shoplights fail pretty fast - I don't buy them anymore.  If they have a starter (instead of a real ballast) and cost $10, you can pretty much throw them away after less than a year.  We got a 4-lamp fixture from a lay-in grid ceiling and mounted it above the bench on angle iron. 

I guess I got lucky, mine's been up there 4 years, and on pretty much all the time, with no problems. One tube's getting a bit black at the end.

>The other question is whether to put one side of the bench against a wall.  This allows you to have a Pomona test lead rack on the wall, real handy.  

I need one or two of those, I also found a wooden tie rack that does well on the wall with about 50 cables.

>Otherwise it ends up either on the end of the bench, with test leads dragging on the floor, or out of reach somewhere.  You can never have enough alligator clips, or voltmeter leads, or tiny grabbers. 
>
>What goes on the floor?  Right now my office has cheap carpet (bad) or plastic chair rollers (worse).  I bought an antistatic chair roller pad, and I get a shock every time I sit down.  This is not going to work.  

I wanted an antistatic chair mat, but they apparently don't make them for wood floors.

>Linoleum?  Wood?  Soak a carpet with soap?  Bare concrete is not an option, I am on the second floor.  Besides, bare concrete is too good a ground, I don't like to have low-resistance grounded surfaces around my bench, BTDTGTTS.  

Unfinished wood desk, on hard wood floors works for me.
I usually work in socks, which provides fair conductivity, and encourages me to keep the DIP-40's off the floor :)
 

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