Category: The Container Project

Once we got the boxes moved into place, we began the process of fitting each one out for it’s intended purpose.  There were a couple of key aspects we wanted to focus on – first, and foremost is flexibility – we want the container studios to be adaptable and easily convertible for whatever we might have in store for them.  Of course, they’re portable, so when we expand we can slide them around, but we may want to completely repurpose them for something we haven’t even thought of yet, ’cause that’s how we roll.

The second part of our focus is our commitment to recycling and repurposing.  We’re going to be buying some equipment new, but for the most part the fit-out will be with salvaged, saved and recycled materials.

Lighting

For the lighting we opted for LED shop lights – very affordable now, and very lightweight.  This let us use magnets on the steel containers to hang the lights, and let us move them around at will.  This was a case of not using our salvaged florescent tubes…  they’re just too thirsty for electricity, and the LEDs are super bright and super efficient.

We also installed some really simple motion-activated switches for them.  Besides being safer and easier, they also save energy, since they turn off automatically after 20 minutes.  There’s no need to remember to turn them off when you’re done in the area.

…now we just have to print up a little bracket for them with our 3D printers.

HVAC

A big consideration is getting heat and A/C into the boxes.  We opted for what’s called “split” units – heat pumps that provide both AC and heat in one unit.  These are rated at 9000 BTU and are typically used in small apartments, with the compressor mounted outside.   We put ours on the roof:

They’ll be used as needed, especially in the Digital Imaging and 3D Printing studios, where climate control is a big plus.

Dust Control

A huge concern is the dust coming from some of the woodworking tools.  The big culprits are the CNC router, the chop saw, radial arm saw and any hand-held routers or sanders, so the strategy is to install a large, 70-gallon dust collector and place the main unit in the back where the noise would be baffled.  We ran 4″ hose to the main tools on the roof and through the ceiling, and added a few gates for tools on the main floor, like the table saw.

At one end of the woodshop container we have a series of 20″ fans with integrated air filters, catching all the airborne light dust – visible in the top of the photo below:

Doors and Windows

Finally, we have the large openings we asked Wayside to cut, and the ends which were originally doors, which we asked to be removed.  We also scored a couple of things on CraigsList – this pile of 13 or so windows:

And some patio doors.  We hung the doors using Unistrut and some little rollers, which meant we got to practice with the MIG a little:

…and we’re playing around with different ways to use the big windows:

Also, in an effort to afford some privacy in the Digital Imaging studio, which we’re going to be using for Podcasting and meetings as well, we found some blackout curtain that doubles as sound baffling.  We’ll also be able to process film in the box!

Oh, lest we forget!  We found we needed some shelving, and we had some Unistrut scraps hanging around along with some of those bakers rack shelves.  The containers come with tie-down rings, top and bottom, so we came up with this:

After about a month of actual use, the containers are working better than we could have imagined!  The sound and dust is under a lot better control in the woodshop, and the 3D printers and digital printers are happy as clams, protected from the drafts and dust of the warehouse space.

It’s a work in progress of course…  we need to keep working on the doors and windows, and we need an access solution for wheelchairs… and of course, the inevitable second level!  As always, stay tuned!

We could call this chapter “Threading the Needle”.  Now that we had each one of these painted in their turn, we had to get them into the space.  Mind you, we don’t have a lot of extra room in the first place, and we didn’t want to shut the place down for any more than was absolutely necessary.  We also didn’t want people having to crawl over piles of, er, equipment, to get to their shop areas.  The goal was to move them fast and efficiently, yet safely – which, for a 5000lb box, meant slowly and deliberately.

Here’s the first box coming in – and it slid in like a dream:

 

The second went in with only two people working it – we were getting good!  The third had quite a team helping out… and some pretty amusing moments (and commentary!).

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…on to the Fit-Out!

So let’s suppose you have around 5000 square feet of work space, with no walls and oh, around 25′ – 30′ high ceilings.  It’s a warehouse, so there’s, well, dust.  You also have stuff that makes more dust, like a woodshop, and stuff that doesn’t want any dust at all, like a 3D printing farm and an electronics and digital imaging area.

You’re also committed to recycle-reuse…  oh, and the place gets a little drafty and has no AC.  Noisy too, not great if you want to have classes and maybe kids in there.

Yeah, we came up with the idea of moving in container studios too…  you’ve been reading the spoilers!

The next series of posts will be telling the container story, from how we contacted Wayside Trailers in Peabody, they fell in love with the idea and helped us at every turn, to the move-in and outfitting of the spaces.  It was, first and foremost, a great challenge that was a lot of fun, but more, a huge learning experience and an amazing solution.

So here’s the story of how we went from that ^^^., to this:

The Plan

We were supported in large part by a grant from the Mass Development Collaborative Workspace program, and so we were able to think about this as a complete and professionally-executed project.  Not to say we don’t approach everything like that, but it makes it a whole lot easier when we have some reasonable funding, and a huge shoutout and thanks go to the folks there.  The first step was putting the plan together, and to do that, we pulled in all our resources in our Rapid Prototyping studio to 3D print scale models, laser cut and CNC machine our scale spaces.

This let us make some intelligent decisions about how many containers we’d need, and what size we should get.  It also helped us spec what we wanted for door and window holes cut it the boxes, as well as how we were going to lay the space out once we got them moved in.  (…not to mention letting us demonstrate the power of Rapid Prototyping for a project like this.)

We settled on a 20′ long, “Standard” size container, which is 8′ wide and 8′ 6″ high from the inside.  Just for some reference, these weigh about 5000 lbs, and can support something in the neighborhood of 85,000 lbs if stacked on the corner supports.  They’re typically moved around with pallet jacks, dollies and, of course, huge forklifts (which we didn’t have access to.)

The Move-In

The challenge here is, more than anything else, receiving the containers, prepping them with painting and HVAC, and then moving them into a working shop without causing too much down-time and hazardous traffic problems in the shop.  Fortunately, we had a big area inside the garage doors to stage most of the work.

Here’s how that went:

Painting and Prepping

Once we got the boxes in, one at a time, we could paint them:

They came to us cleaned and painted in “Battleship Gray”, which is fine if you’re painting a battleship, but we wanted a little more fun feel to it.  We settled on an airless sprayer after starting with a HVLP system (“High Volume Low Pressure”).  The HVLP was a beautiful finish, but was really slow…  the airless was described as “good for painting bridges and other large structures…”, pretty much a perfect description of what we were doing, right?  The airless was astoundingly fast.  To paint the inside and out with the HVLP took a few hours, with the airless, only about an hour for the whole thing.  Using cardboard sheets to mask the floor was a brilliant move – they cost $25 for 5, from Grainger, and are 4′ x 8′ – just right, and faster than tarps by a longshot.

Here are the other two boxes:

Next up: installing them in the space, and the outfit!