Material storage clean up

[Gibbtall]

The awesome @emerson took some time today to clean up the laser material storage ad chatted with me about some awesome ideas to keep it clean.

First I’d like to remind everyone that there shouldn’t be able material leaning up against the storage box, the space beside it is meant for the lathe and, horizontal bandsaw and other tools.

The problem with this tends to be that the storage bets messy and expands, Emerson proved within a few hours though that the problem is much more of an organization issue.

Here’s the state of the storage at the moment, it’s been organized in to 3 different sections for members, on the left there is New Material storage, this is for any new piece of wood that hasn’t been used on the laser yet. Most people end up with 4 sheets at a time of plywood, which means we have a whole lot of untouched material. The good thing is, it’s super easy to keep these together and organized, they don’t snag on each other, they’re very similar in size, and aren’t being pulled out and put back constantly.

Section 2, in the middle, is for larger wood and plastics, this is a smaller section, so easier to keep organized as long as they stick together.

Section 3, on the right, we have In Use materials, this is for anything that has been worked on, currently there is actually a whole lot in here that has no name or date as Emerson was too worried to throw anything away, it would be great if someone could do another cull of what’s here. This section should stay pretty lean, you should one version have 1 sheet of any particular material going at once, I currently have a sheet on 3mm and one of 6mm, if I end up with such a small work area on one of those that I require to pull out a fresh sheet, I should then cut down the first in to a something small enough for my locker or just add it to the scraps.

Here’s a shot of all of the In Use pieces, including much trash.

I really like this new sorting system, it keeps all of the high traffic pieces together and separate from longer term storage. Ideally this will mean less lost material, less shifting of weight, and less expanding storage.

If you’d like to help cull the material that’s currently there and/or add some new signage, please feel free! Nothing was thrown away in this shift, so that proves we DO have the room to store what we have with the right organization.

[TyIsI]

thanks @Emerson!

[Janet]

Thanks so much @emerson and @Gibbtall - this looks amazing and is much appreciated!

[faja66]

You Rock buddy!

[Rebel_without_Clause]

Thank you @emerson and @Gibbtall!

[JDMc]

It sounds like this combines (in-use) material that still belongs to someone and material that is up for grabs. People will need to be more diligent about checking for ownership before using scrap material. (And labeling or re-labeling in-use material they wish to retain.)

I can’t quite tell from the photo, but it looks like the ‘Free-to-use’ and “Member storage” signs are still on the first upright - they should be removed if that’s no longer the organization system.

[Gibbtall]

I’d like to keep using that, it makes sense and I’m sure someone has used it appropriately. There are some unnamed pieces currently in the member section, but that’s simply due to Emerson being worried about throwing out material. I agree though, about people checking throughly to make sure their pieces are labeled, and to be diligent about checking a new piece for a name before using it, as many of them got rotated so that it’s harder to see the name.