First things first! I needed to pack up all the small things around the shop so I could move them easily
To do this I enlisted Mike's help and we made fairly short work of it! It helped a lot that the shop was already well organized, a lot of stuff could be transported exactly as it was.
Next I needed to remove the plastic dust wall and all the framing for it. The plastic came down very easily with the help of a knife duct-taped onto a pole!
I then needed to demolish the cabinet I'd built around the compressor, and then we could start loading things onto the truck!
With the help of a couple of good friends all the stuff we could move by hand got moved out pretty quickly!
We used a relatively small 20 foot u-haul truck and made a couple of trips to get everything moved to the new shop
As you can see the new shop is a lot larger than the old one! No more neighbours complaining about noise either!
With all the smaller stuff moved it was time to think about the compressor and the tumbler, both of which weight quite a bit!
My plan was to set them both up on pallets so they could be easily moved with a forklift when my rigger came to move Milly! This actually worked out really well!
The biggest issue was getting the compressor onto the pallet I'd built for it...
Picking up the compressor with the engine hoist was a bit sketchy because I couldn't lift from right above the centre of gravity. With some careful pushing we got it positioned
and bolted down to the heavy duty pallet that I made for it!
next I needed to prep Milly for transport. This involves pinning the counterweight in place so it won't bang around inside the column, blocking the head in place to make sure I don't
damage the ballscrew, and removing the Z axis servo and moving the cable chain so she will actually fit out through the door.
Bear in mind I'm managing to fit a full size VMC through just a double door here! That's pretty amazing!
Once everything was moved to the new shop I realized I was going to be really short on workbenches! So I decided to make a couple of stool-height benches that I would use as my
main workspace. I bought a couple of solid kitchen counter-tops and then cracked out the MIG welder to make some legs for them. I used 2 inch square tube to make sure they were sturdy
I then sealed the bamboo tops with a couple of coats of water-based urethane to make sure they'd stay looking nice!
Looking pretty sweet!
Then it was time to get Milly setup and ready for power! This was fairly simple, I just had to remove the blocking I'd put in for transport and re-install the z-axis servo and cable chain.
The electricians then showed up and started to run power for everything! Amazingly there were only 2 outlets installed in the whole shop, so there was a lot of work to be done!
The rigger then showed up with a new toy! He had this Hardinge GT27 lathe in storage and wanted to get rid of it so he gave me a bargain! Given that I had the space I jumped on it...
though to be honest I'm not sure if I'll end up hanging onto it as I don't need a lot of turned parts.
The two 'new' Fadal VMC15s then showed up on a truck coming from a storage unit where they've sat for the last year.
I only really needed one of these but the seller only wanted to sell them together and the price was crazy low so I grabbed them!
Then finally with power and air setup it was time to get Milly running again so I could start making some knives! This was not really a big deal, I just had to re-install all the tools
and the fixture plate and then I was good to go!
Setting up the shop neatly and efficiently is a different story! That is going to take a while!