Home Machine Shop Hall of Fame, Page 3

Here is a fellow that loves a great shop, loves cars, and loves Monarch lathes. How can you beat that?

Vintage-style hot rod car with a deep red finish and chrome accents.

In case you wonder what he builds in that shop...

Well-organized workshop with tools on pegboards and metrology equipment.

I like putting the sockets with the wrenches so you can find the same size quickly...

Bay O' Machinery!

Major Monarch Envy! He has at least 3 of them...

Serious horizontal mill and looks like a big press as well. Pegboard on pillar to store mill cutters is nice use of space...

Cabinets galore, and a row O' drill presses. I've seen that a lot. Not sure the value there...

Coupla mills and that row of drill presses seen better. Got to love all that blue!

Part washing station is industrial grade. I'm guessing the impact tools are not there by accident: helpful trying to get rusted parts unstuck!

And some kinda Toy Box it was too!

Thank you kindly for the tour!

A Monarch AND a Deckel???

This has to be one of the neatest, most tidy, compact, and well equipped shops around. Mr A. Blake gets by with the basics: a lathe and a mill. But the lathe and mill chosen are certainly not basic! Two of the premier machine tool names are here, a Monarch 10EE lathe and a Deckel CNC mill. Both are beautifully made precision tools, and their compactness makes them ideal for this shop. In addition, the owner's flair for neat organization makes the shop look almost empty, despite the fact that he is fully tooled up and ready to go.

Welder, drill press, tool cart, Monarch, Deckel, tooling, stock under the work table...

A compressor like mine is hiding between the two machines. Must be a grinder somewhere too I would guess...

Nice looking Monarch. The ones I've seen in white are pretty new...

Deckel with the splash guards folded down...

Tooling is neatly organized...

Mxtra's Ultra Clean Production Shop

Here is another fellow that likes blue machines (my fave!). He has a production shop for a product he has designed for the offroad bike crowd. Check out the meticulous set up. He built all the benches and refinished all the machines. Never seems to run out of that brushed aluminum, does he? It is a composite material called "Alpolic", which is plastic laminated with brushed aluminum sheet. Apparently its used as a decorative material by sign makers and by architects on buildings. Supposedly it costs $150 per sheet, and Mxtras says he used about 15 sheets on this project. Cool material to work with!