The original plan was to simply screw the bench drill to the workbench and that would be it. However, the PBD 40 has openings in the aluminum base which dirt can and will inevitably fall into the hollow base.

Then another idea came to mind: similar to the bench grinder, build a base and integrate a drawer into it. Also mostly made from 40 mm multiplex scraps. No sooner said than done: this is what the result looks like now:

Except for the “front panel,” the drawer is simply made of leftover laminate without integrated impact sound insulation (MDF slides well!) and is fixed with 3D-printed brackets using M3 countersunk screws. After working with the machine, you can now simply sweep the dirt through the openings in the base and remove the drawer from time to time to empty it conveniently.

Der Beitrag A dirt trap drawer for the Bosch PBD 40 erschien zuerst auf flohs blog.

I purchased a Bosch bench drill for our workshop – a PBD 40. The data sheet looks good, and I bought this tool second-hand, but I had some reservations before purchasing it:

You often read that the accuracy leaves something to be desired, especially when drilling small diameters in metal. It was clear to me from the outset that if I bought this model, I would immediately convert the internal bearings to something more precise.

That’s why buying second-hand made sense; I didn’t want to be restricted in my actions by a warranty period and preferred to invest the money I saved on the purchase in the conversion. Alternative bench drills, e.g., from Scheppach* or Parkside, don’t really offer much more, and I can’t imagine that they are any more accurate. That’s why I opted for Bosch, even if it’s “only” Bosch Green (for private use, not commercial).

Upgrade

First of all: There was a really interesting and useful thread in the official Bosch forums about which bearings are suitable and how to convert the whole thing.

Unfortunately, it seems to have been deleted in the meantime; at least, I can’t find it anymore. If I come across the content in the future, I will add it here, but unfortunately that seems unlikely. Things can disappear so quickly!

The precision bearings used were these two from Kugellager-Express.

Disassembly and reassembly is quite easy to do. Simply remove all visible screws until you have taken the gearbox apart. Be careful with the cables and plugs, as these are often quite short.

The most difficult part is removing the pressed-in bearing in the aluminum housing; even with an internal puller, it took me several attempts. Photos:

Conclusion

The observations made by the original posters of this conversion were not exaggerated: the concentricity and drilling precision have really improved considerably, even with the original drill chuck, which is often described as “poor”!

There is virtually no noticeable play anymore. Anyone who owns a PBD 40 and is dissatisfied with its precision should carry out this conversion; I am very satisfied.

Der Beitrag Bosch PBD 40 bench drill: Increase accuracy erschien zuerst auf flohs blog.

For our workshop, I wanted a bench grinder* that, unlike most, was equipped with a wire brush on one side instead of another, coarser grinding wheel. This poses a problem: a significant imbalance, as the grinding wheel is much heavier and more round than the wire brush.

Regardless of this, a bench grinder is generally a vibrating machine. In my “old” makeshift workshop, there was an older bench grinder with two fairly well-aligned, smooth-running grinding wheels – also screwed to the worktop. Even when starting up, the entire worktop vibrated, let alone when you held something against the wheels with force to grind it.

In our “new” workshop, which is built into the house, I wanted to avoid the problem from the outset, or at least minimize it significantly.

How do you do that?

I had already had experience with so-called “rubber-metal buffers” in the past to decouple a two-cylinder air compressor. It worked so well that it was hard to believe:

The mount on which the compressor stood at full operation basically no longer vibrated, which made everything much quieter. So my first thought for this grinding block was similar – rubber-metal buffers.

Implementation

It’s actually quite simple: First of all, I should mention that I am relatively tall, so a “foot” that raises the bench grinder is very useful for me. This is how I did it:

• Two pieces of 40 mm multiplex cut to size and sanded
• Holes drilled and countersunk in the lower of the two panels so that they can be screwed to the worktop later
• Recesses drilled from the other side so that self-locking nuts can be pressed in to hold the upper panel in place
• Using a 25 mm Forstner bit, cylinders approx. 10 mm deep were drilled into the upper panel so that the buffers could be made to disappear almost completely
• Suitable through holes were drilled in both panels for all screws

I used 20 mm buffers with internal threads on both sides (Type C, Ø 20, Height 20 mm, IG/IG M6, NK 55 (20-20-C)*), with galvanized 8.8 M6 hexagon socket screws* and lock washers both from below (invisible) and from above to secure the grinding block.

Experiences

The decoupling is not 100% effective – slight vibrations can still be felt. This is particularly noticeable because we keep our storage systems for screws etc. on the same worktop – you can feel and hear even the slightest vibration.

Nevertheless, the result is really good: 99% less vibration.

Photos

You can clearly see the gap between the plate and the machine; light shines through the gap.

Der Beitrag Decoupling the bench grinder – Scheppach SM200LB erschien zuerst auf flohs blog.

I had to make a decision for our workshop: new or used vise?
It had to be a solid design. If new, only something like Heuer* would be an option. I’ve had bad experiences with very cheap welded constructions.

In the end, I opted for a used gray cast iron vise and bought it cheaply (€50) from a private ad. It would have been possible to use it as it was, but since I tend to clean and overhaul everything I buy second-hand, I took it apart straight away:

Cleaning

Then it was time to remove the old paint with a wire brush attachment* and thinner*, producing a lot of dirt in the process. This gray cast iron vise is quite heavy, which makes it a little difficult to handle—in the truest sense of the word. Underneath, everything actually looked fine, with no cracks or similar damage:

Before painting, the surfaces were smoothed using a roughing disc* on an angle grinder, as were the sides. Gray cast iron is simply a rather coarse manufacturing process, which also needs to be machined coarsely. A Dremel*, sandpaper* and abrasive fleece* were then used for the finer details.

New paint

As a final step, I coated the vise twice with anthracite-colored, synthetic resin-based hammer finish paint*. The numbers on the side were highlighted with white acrylic paint*:

Findings and conclusion

The fact that the jaws appear to be made of hardened steel and are replaceable is a big plus. The fact that the “jaw screws” have M7 threads is not: replacements are difficult to find and, when you do find them, unnecessarily expensive.

I have since found and purchased some in China on AliExpress* and am now using homemade alternative jaws made of copper rails with 3D-printed protective attachments instead of the original ones (these additionally widen the clamping range to 150 mm).

The vise is in constant use and, as expected, has proven to be very robust and useful. However, it does have one disadvantage: it cannot be rotated or easily converted for rotation. I would have liked this feature, primarily to reduce the overhang above the workbench in case of doubt. And, of course, to be able to work better on some workpieces when rotated. However, I only realized this after everything had been installed as it is now.

From a technical point of view, this ZAG 125 vice, costing less than €100, is probably the best value for money you can get for such a solid tool.

Currently installed

Der Beitrag Overhaul a ZAG 125 vise erschien zuerst auf flohs blog.

During a previous refurbishment project, I had purchased several identical models of an OEM SFF PC from Acer at a bargain price. One of these remained unused and had been gathering dust for months.

⧉ Acer

After the workshop was built and an SFF or mini PC was planned for it, I decided on the spot to use this old Acer Aspire. If it’s no longer sufficient one day, it can always be replaced. The requirements for this “workshop PC” are clear:

• Two digital image outputs, each with at least Full HD at 60 Hz
• Compact design
• Not particularly susceptible to or sensitive to dirt
• Inexpensive or free
• Windows 11 Pro should run, even indirectly

The PC can meet these requirements as it came from the factory, but I decided to upgrade the hardware as cost-effectively as possible. The original configuration was as follows:

At that time, Windows 10 Pro 1909 was running on the PC, which, to put it mildly, wasn’t performing particularly well. The hard drive is loud, gets warm, and is slow—you can feel it with every click. The two cores without Turbo Boost, with their 4 GB DDR3, are not exactly lavishly equipped with reserves either. At least the RAM is dual-channel – that doesn’t save anything in modern times, but I think it’s worth mentioning. Nowadays, ready-made PCs often use single bars with, for example, 8 GB of DDR4, which costs a few percent in performance right from the start.

The first thing I did was update the BIOS to P01.A3 (from May 5, 2010).

Time for an upgrade

If you look at the built-in OEM motherboard from Acer, you can clearly see what should be possible. I’m simply assuming that there are no artificial limitations:

⧉ Acer

After doing some research into what was available, I decided on the following new configuration:

I had the graphics card in its original packaging, I bought the RAM new at a very low price on AliExpress, and I bought the CPU used on eBay. I already had the SSD and HDDs, and the USB card and adapter also came from AliExpress. The USB 3.0 to SATA adapters are from Sabrent*, and these were also already there – they were recently available at a good price, so I bought several right away. I haven’t had good experiences with the cheap Chinese ones.

Is it working?

The first observation is that only 16 GB of RAM is displayed in the BIOS, regardless of how much more has been installed. Fortunately, the RAM is recognized correctly elsewhere; Ubuntu Desktop and Windows 10/11 report the correct 32 GB at 1333 MHz.

To be able to connect additional internal storage devices, I installed a low-profile USB 3.0 expansion card* together with a “USB 3.0 header to 2x socket*” adapter. I left the internal DVD drive installed, and the Samsung SSD is connected to SATA-II instead of the original hard drive. I 3D-printed adapters for all 2.5″ data carriers so that they could be securely attached.

⧉ SSU

The variety of connections has increased somewhat:

Conclusion

The PC now runs much better; even under Windows 11 Pro, I would describe it as “smooth” to “very smooth.” There are no hiccups anywhere, not even in the usual places such as the rendered start menu or settings app surfaces. I also overclocked the new graphics card, which is still weak, to its limit. This is very noticeable when playing 4K videos, where decoding previously generated 80-90% load. Now the load is in the range of 60%. Not that 4K material would be played here, but as a test it was quite helpful to see the limits.

This PC is used to operate a Full HD TV via a DVI-D to HDMI adapter* and a 21.5″ touch screen, also with Full HD resolution, directly via HDMI. The PC handles this surprisingly well.

The internal hard drive with 1 TB storage capacity is used for media files, while the smaller 320 GB drive is used for downloads and as a cache drive. The expansion card was chosen as USB 3.0 instead of SATA in order to have two external USB 3.0 ports. Theoretically good, practically not so much: Next time, I would simply expand 2-4 additional SATA data ports internally and operate them with the 2.5“ HDDs using a power adapter. The adapter card occasionally (rarely) disconnects and the two drives disappear from Windows, audibly with the usual ”USB disconnected” sound from Windows. Only a “real” restart or deactivating/reactivating the corresponding USB controller in Device Manager helps. Attaching a small passive heat sink to the controller chip had no effect. I suspect that the hard drives draw too much power at times, causing the controller to shut down (a VL805 from VIA).

Windows 11 was chosen mainly because of its better touch operation compared to Windows 10. An alternative would be Windows 8.1, which would have run super fast on this PC but unfortunately offers hardly any software support, not to mention updates.

All in all, a successful endeavor. This PC will probably continue to serve its purpose for a long time to come when it comes to playing web radio, other music, or media files.

Der Beitrag Werkstatt-PC, or: “What should I do with this old SFF PC?” erschien zuerst auf flohs blog.

In the house we are currently renovating, there is a room that was formerly used as a “tractor garage” – for which there will be no use in its current form in the future.

The floor is in really poor condition; it consists of dirty (sand) stone slabs on earth, without proper foundations, etc., and it is also uneven.
In addition, during the renovations of the house in recent decades, no particular attention was paid to ensuring that the brick walls were aligned with the existing wall remains in the floor, with the result that the walls stand on much thicker “feet.”

The preliminary work is therefore to bring the walls into an almost straight shape over their entire height, which I did with a diamond roughing disc on a 125 mm standard angle grinder, in several attempts. Dry grinding creates a lot of dust and roughing mineral building materials is very strenuous.

Once that was done, I quickly put together a rough layout in Microsoft’s 3D Builder. More professional CAD software would have been better, but this rough version is sufficient to get a better idea of the whole thing. This is what came out of it:

The black blocks are intended to represent toolboxes, but in reality, they were arranged on top of each other rather than side by side in order to make maximum use of the space.

Build

With this rough idea in mind, we then started building. First, the parapet and cable ducts* were aligned and installed, then the lighting structure, and finally the table structures. A multimedia channel* for the planned touch screen was installed flush with the wall and provided with openings. A cross-line laser* was used for everything and proved very helpful—after all, many elements had to be arranged in a U-shape, which was an ideal application for it.

In the end, everything was dismantled again, imperfections were filled in, and the room was thoroughly cleaned. Then it was painted white several times. Next, as the most cost-effective compromise, industrial-grade PVC was glued in one piece to the slightly smoothed floor. This was turned up at the edges of the room in the form of a kind of “baseboard” and secured with aluminum profiles.

Then everything was put back in piece by piece – first the ducts, then the tables, the shelves, and finally the tool walls.

Of course, this was a very detailed and lengthy process. In total, the whole thing took several months (not full-time, of course), and two people worked on the construction.

Current status?

In the end, some things were implemented slightly differently than shown in the CAD above. For example, there are now three LED panels per side instead of four. The back wall is far from unused: it holds an old 40″ Samsung TV, a convection radiator from Kermi, and storage space for quick-release clamps.

The PC, indicated as a white block, was moved to a specially built compartment and shares it with a black Nintendo Wii, including a power supply and external hard drive.

In the main work area, a base cabinet was removed and replaced with a beverage refrigerator that even has its own switch in the parapet channel, complete with a blue status LED. Worktop lighting* with an aluminum profile anti-glare shield has also been installed.

I don’t have any photos of the final result at the moment—I would take some, but as is always the case, the room is currently being used primarily for storage; all the building materials have to go somewhere. I will submit detailed photos when the workshop is presentable.

Der Beitrag “Let’s build a workshop in this storage room” erschien zuerst auf flohs blog.