Pallet Racks Proposal

General
1

Hi All,

We are clearly in need of improved storage at the hive and there is a plan in action that is only lacking more pallet racks. As such, I am looking to upgrade pallet rack storage. It appears we spent around $700-1,000 on previous pallet rack purchases. I would like to propose a $1,000 budget to purchase more pallet racks. I have been actively looking for used pallet racks and believe that $1,000 should be more than sufficient to purchase pallet racks for in front of the fab lab and further expansion (start with fab lab and when that is reorganized, we have plans for more!).

Cheers,

2

vote yes
probably wont be there in person.
-D

3

Vote yes on funds and plan of action.

4

Yes from me

5

I’m in favor, so don’t misinterpret the next section as criticism. More storage is great.

However, where are we going to put all the stuff over there? Since much of it is long abandoned and useless, let’s NOT put it on the new racks. That would defeat the purpose.

Analyzing our space usage a couple years ago, I concluded that we could free up 1/3 of existing storage space on racks simply. I freed up a whole shelf above electronics area simply by getting rid of empty boxes, unneeded parts / trash, and moving stuff from 1/8th full boxes to other boxes.

Historically, we have been really bad at purging old stuff & we need more space for NEW stuff, especially member projects in process. Heck I found inkjet supplies and all manner of completely ripped apart or broken items recently when I went through a lot of these boxes – do we need tons of inkjets and cartridges?

How about this:

We have a garage sale in the end of September. All proceeds to Hive, all unsold items to scrappers. We could also open this up to member donations, so we could unload stuff from our own homes. I have a few things that may be sale-able, but not enough to have my own garage sale. A community garage sale would be rewarding.

3rd - we are not using all of our space. We should also consider a safe and easy way to access high shelves. I notice often that we are not using 1/3rd or more of our storage space. A track ladder would be useful and I bet Kevin could rig a great one up in a weekend. A cheaper, simpler solution would be a ladder that can simply hook into the racks so it’s stable.

I am a bit frustrated with palette racks, as I have a permanent nerve injury resultant of spine injury affecting my left arm and shoulder. This is not so bad, but it makes it difficult to manage the pallet rack solution. I can’t even manage one of the storage boxes we made a while back, even though they are on low shelves. Of course, fancy ladders are not required, a simple “handicap & less able (older) member parking area” at bottom would be the easiest solution to this problem.

I can’t physically lift the extension chord box down from rack. I tried once and ended up injuring myself and going to my orthopedist later. I also cannot hold my left arm overhead for more than a minute or two without compressing the nerve (very painful).

Okay, TMI, but point made.

Yes to the palette racks, but it’s an incomplete solution. We also need:

  1. To sell / purge 6 years of unneeded stuff before we become hoarders.

  2. Solutions for less able-bodied members.

Lorin

6

Even if I’m not available at the necessary time, you can use my truck for pickup. You know the drill Tiff. :). Hopefully I will be available to help.
D

7

I vote yes on more racks but I want to echo Lorin’s comments. Let’s have a clean out to determine really what we have/need for storage.
The garage sale is an interesting idea. Wonder if we would end up getting more junk than getting rid of. :slight_smile: Would we have it at the Hive or do a flea market thing?

Also may want to layout the actual space we have to put the racks. I think we are talking about the entrance area for the FabLab, but will a complete rack fit there? Simple to measure out the space available. Would we be getting rid of some lockers or shelves?
I can throw something together in SketchUP if needed. I think there is a primitive floor plan floating around. Really only need to get dimensions for the interested area.

8

Since people are piggy backing off everyone elses idea’s, I figure I might as well jump on the bandwagon =P. I like your Idea of SketchUP’ing something for the pallet rack area (or that’s what I understood from it), but we’ve talked about awhile back of doing a full CAD mockup of the hive. The space itself, each piece of major equipment, etc. So anytime we would want to do any major tweaking of the workspace, we could reference those models, would have exact measurements, and a visual representation to determine a few other factors (i.e. workflow, wide enough pathways, etc). We could even take it a step further to 3d print out the space and we would have a physical 3 dimensional floorplan of the space to make even people with no cad experience able to give their input.

I don’t know how hard it would be to cad up the space, let alone major equipment in the hive. But having something like this done before putting up pallet racks would be a great idea, plus we would have it to reference in the future whenever we would like to do another makeover of the hive.

I’m all in favor of getting pallet racks and for the garage cleanup, and I would love to contribute to the CAD work even if it means just measure stuff (my CAD fu is weak)

Food for thought.

9

Dustin,

Ha. Didn’t mean to hijack the original thread.
Perhaps we should start a new one.

I have a scan of some older floor plan but I don’t know how accurate it is. Wouldn’t take to long to measure out the space. We don’t need crazy accuracy.

I did a Sketchup of the CNC area from the project. We can add on to that one.

Thanks,

Brad

10

I vote yes on the pallet rack budget proposal.

As a member that isn’t exactly the most active and what not in the space, you can take the following comment with a grain of salt, but I do also want to echo the sentiment Lorin began about the items currently in front of the fab lab and elsewhere that may or may not be abandoned. I don’t ever see myself regularly using any storage aside from an assigned box and would probably take everything home with me at the end of the day most of the time anyway, but from the perspective of a relatively new member, it can be a little discouraging to come into the Hive, and when it comes time to start thinking about working on projects and asking about storage, to both hear that space is getting tight around the Hive, and yet get the feeling that about 1/3 of the stuff stored around the space is potentially orphaned.

I’m probably blowing hot air and just not good at getting my foot in the door about finding space, but that’s my two cents. I should probably put my words to actions and help with a Saturday cleanup from now on.

11

I will gladly work on a system to improve getting both people up and down in the rack areas

12

just a reminder, we are voting tonight at the hive about the pallet rack proposal. If you are unable to make it please vote on the mailing list here.

Leadership has a plan of action in regards to abandoned items at the hive. :slight_smile:

Thanks,
Tiffany

13

Vote yes, if I haven’t already.
-D

14

If I have not voted yet a definite yes from me comma also I did not know what all that included however if we wanted to look at the hauler racks as an option and cut them down to the right size I have no problem helping with that project. Even if we could find huge ones that we could section in half vertically and get basically 2 racks for the price of one depending on cost. Oddly it all seems to come down to what size exactly someone is looking for so we might yet a better deal on a taller set, and then have some material left over to possibly make a damn nice workbench out of and weld it together or Bolt it for a bulletproof frame.

15

Tim, yes, 95% of that stuff in front of the fablab has not been touched in many years. You are not mistaken.

Last I inventoried the racks above electronics area, I noted that about 60% on those racks is abandoned, trash, or just WTF. Also, I’ve freed up a bunch of space in the past by just consolidating mostly empty boxes and stacking properly.

We do have more space than we think we do. It’s just a lot harder to get rid of stuff sometimes than to get it…

Lorin

16

I vote yes

Alex

17

Pallet racks en route. Any help unloading is much appreciated. Should be at hive 30ish mins
Tiffany

18

Do we have any idea when we are going to assemble to pallet racks? Went down to the space to do some work and can’t get to the plywood without moving everything. Also any news on the space next door?