How to lead the ERP lab

First and foremost... broken printers are bad news. Pitch them. Laser, dot matrix doesn't matter, get rid of it. They breed like tribbles, and lead to broken keyboards and bad mice. That then leads to broken toys and vacuum cleaners. Before you know it you have a room full of CRT monitors and your scratching your head saying "what happen?" You let the printer in.

Places where I see the most trouble in right now, is the workspaces. I actually blame the floor for this. The workspaces will never stay clear until the floor is cleared swept and mopped. Otherwise the room looks cluttered and the workspaces seem like a logical place to set something down. If the floors are clear, a cluttered workspace seems out of place. There is another element that is fairly daunting... the shelving. Even after I got rid of the hackables space in the room, I knew that people would still leave stuff there. It's infurating I know but the shelving has junk on it so that must be where junk goes. This can happen to any room. Stuff appearing is a part of life in this room. Keep on top of it like Luke in a trash compactor.

This area has a lot of hidden treasures The v90 is actually your responsibility (not the CNC Lead's for some reason) When it's back working it's a nice piece of equipment. The black CNC is yours, It'll do aluminum, and typically works. The blue CNC is in a state of perpetual "ready to go soon"ness. There is a CNC lathe as well. Oh and the board goblin. The lil Tom built board milling machine that doesn't get enough press. It always works and if you hold your nose just right does a right tight QFN package.

The workspaces are divided up into tasks. There is troubleshooting (the tan bench) it sports a few power supplies, a nice analogue oscilloscope, small frequency generator, over sized logic analyser, and a spectrum analyser. On the bench itself there is a hot air rework machine, and a soldering iron. Directly behind you when you are sitting there is the bulk of the cables and jumpers for the equipment, as well as the odd tools for screws, bolts, and anything else that gets in your way. You could completely rebuild a cellphone from the ground up on that bench without getting up. Well, theoretically, I've never tried it, and to hear me say it that's a pretty big statement. The other workspace is the assembly bench. It sports a two rework stations one with a powersupply, a right nice board milling machine, and a small reflow oven. Don't cook your hotpocket in there kid. Lead poisoning. Both these benches collect clutter like crap draws flies. Pitch it. In the trash. Initially, it seems like a violation of the 'be excellent to each other' prime directive, but if they cared about it they wouldn't have left it there. Leaving there for the next guy to clean up is a violation of the prime directive anyway. V90 is pretty good for milling boards, at least that's what the Hamms said, they also use it quite a bit for routing out holes in project boxes. Looked better than what I could do with a dremmel or not-so-exacto knife. The white bench is your cherry on top. This is where I prototype new spaces. Latest is mold making (this means I need to cut down on the dust in there. a constant battle.) perhaps mould making? casting lab let's go with that. so degassing chamber, some common sillicone moulds, that kind of thing. Basically keep an ear out for what folks like to have, put it in your next year's budget, learn how to do it, and do it.

hands hurt, so I'm taking a break.