GP Precision Machine & Repair

About five years ago I started looking for a new house. My then girlfriend decided that she was tired of living in my 800sq ft bachelor pad. The only stipulation I had when we were looking is that the new house had to be out of town(I don't like having neighbors, and have always been a farm kid) and have a shop or enough land to build one. After a few months of looking, we found nice little 2 bedroom 1300 sq ft with 2.5acres of land almost 3 miles outside of town. Only downside to this one was there was no current shop, andthe only garage it had was a narrow single car. This was quite a downgrade from my bachelor pad, which had a decent 24x30 garage. Most of my after work and weekend hours were spent repairing motorcycles and ATVs as a side hustle(the pay in the area of the state/country sucks, but the cost of living is also low). Anyway, i had to fit all of my tools, 5 dirt bikes, boat, extra parts, lathe, and whatever misc stuff i had in my 2 car into this tiny one car garage until i could get a shop built. Needless to say, It just wasn't gonna happen. So I found some temporary storage at a great price. The new house had an old chicken coop that was rotten, so i pushed it over and slid this little guy in its place.



This was a while after moving in, most of my larger stuff was kept at a friends shop and i traded the boat for a little ford tractor. You can see the dirt pad in the background of that pic where the real shop will be going in. Slowly but surely over the course of a year or so I moved countless buckets of from my wife's fish pond to build the pad. I put that little tractor through the ringer. Luckily my subsoil is a nice mix of sand and clay. It compacts nicely and makes for great pad material.




Fast forward a few years, and the building planning and cost estimations are in the works. Due to budget restraints(almost no extra money except the side hustling which seem to take forever), I decided on a 1500sq ft 30x50 steel truss weld up frame building with plans for a lean-to to be completed at a later date. In hindsight, i should have gone with a wider and shorter building (40x40 or so) for about the same cost. But this is my first building, and you gotta learn somehow.

I sold the little storage shed(for 1k profit, easy money$$) and put that money towards some concrete. In April i was finally able to get started.

The concrete guys showed up early in June.



The slab is 6" with 18" deep x 12" wide footing. Building anchorage is by 6x6x.5" plates with anchor bolts set flush with slab surface. They also put 6 concrete pillars on the south side for my future lean to. The four objects you see in one of the form pictures are some home made anchors. I stole the idea from a friend of mine and they come in handy. They are just about 1ft length of chain inside some tubing anchored with a long bolt and some rebar. weld a dust cap on the end of the chain and set flush in the slab. makes a lot of shop chores easier.

The concrete guys formed up on Friday, and gave me the weekend to get some conduit and plumbing set. They were there first thing Monday to pour.

Took the fellas around 6 hrs to pour and finish. As a gesture of thanks, I fed them all lunch of pizza hut.
One guy came back that evening to finish it off with some cuts.




After a few weeks of letting the concrete settle, It was time to go get the steel. At this point in time i couldn't afford the sheet metal and insulation, so started with just the structural steel.




The trusses were already pre-fabbed, I just had to weld the trusses to the field cut to length uprights and stand them up. It seemed to me that stacking them on the decently level slab and maintaining squareness from predetermined marks on the concrete would keep everything nice and square. It worked out pretty well i think.



After everything was prepped, I called in some favors from the buddies, free beer and pizza included.
One Saturday with low wind we got close to half the structure put up.



For whatever reason, i have to rotate the pictures about 15 times to get them to upload correctly.

Surely there is an easier way...

Sometimes you gotta have good friends. Between borrowing the skytrack, the backhoe, and the trailer to fetch the material, plus all of the labor my buddies kicked in during this project, i couldn't have asked for more.

On a side note, bought a little flux core welder for ease of use and portability. The lightest welder i could find for this project happened to be a harbor freight flux core 125. Most of the structure is 11ga or 14ga so this little guy was plenty. For what it costs and how light it is,i don't think there was a better suited option. little sucker welds pretty nicely.



No matter how i rotate and upload these pics, it randomly rotates them again. Just a bit frustrating.


A couple weeks later, we had another go round with the structure. Got all of the trusses up, just needed to finish with the roof and side wall purlins and end walls.

After some internal debate, it was time to let my beloved 1992 Toyota 4wd pickup go. It was a sad day as this truck was a low mile example with all the options available in a 1992.

On the upside, the sale netted me a nice profit, enough in combination with my savings to buy the sheet metal and insulation for my shop!

Short 2hr trip with my other Toyota and trailer, and I had my materials. Time to get sweaty.



After a long, calm weekend, we had some progress. I made an axle to go through the rolls of insulation and suspended it from the forks of the skytrack with a chain. We were able to unroll the insulation like a roll of toilet paper up one side, over the top and down the other side without too much effort, maintaining a seamless section. It was nice to not have to cut each piece of insulation.



Most of the end walls were done in spurts over the course of a few weeks with just a couple of us.




Fast forward a couple of weeks, and a lot of solo labor, I was nearing completion.

That is a fine looking shop you have there! Congrats!

Thanks Wheelie. I've got a lot of inspiration from reading your shop thread as well as others in the shop photos sub forum. It is by far my favorite section of this site. I almost feel like I know most of you.


I found a decent deal on a 225A Square D 3 phase breaker panel on ebay. $360 shipped for a 42 circuit panel with mostly single pole 20A breakers already in it. Just add a couple of 2 pole and 3 pole breakers and I'll be in business.



Here's a shot of the interior.




Another good friend of mine dropped off a real nice refrigerated air dryer this week. He said he didn't have room for it in his shop anymore. Not gonna bitch about that at all! That'll also save me a nice chunk of change in the long run.

I picked up an old VMC for a few bucks, hopefully i can get it running to make some money.



Its detailed in this thread.

Bridgeport VMC for rigging costs. Worth it?

I also got my breaker box and meter can installed. Now I'm just waiting on the utilities to set some new transformers and run the service cable(lights are on a drop cord running from the house). Ive been spending most of my evening hours pulling wire and setting conduit boxes for outlets and such, with a little bit of ATV repair to help fund some of the wiring.







I also just picked up some nice work benches and tooling shelves/racks from a local oil rig manufacturer(GEFCO) that went out of business.

Picked up a set of Hillman machinery skates as well. I'll post some more pics of those later.

MotoX said:

I picked up an old VMC for a few bucks, hopefully i can get it running to make some money.

View attachment 308232

Click to expand...

Well, that's a lot more likely to make a few $ than the other items stuffed in there...


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Think Snow Eh!
Ox

OX,

I have not yet moved my other machinery in yet, as i don't know exactly where i'm going to put it.

But yes, boats are a money pit. Luckily, only one is mine, and the other is paying storage fees.

DrHook said:

When I saw you are in Enid, I thought about asking if you had heard of GEFCO, as the outfit I work for has some of their equipment. I knew they were done

Click to expand...

I used to do a bit of sub work for them at my day job before they sold a couple of years ago. The company has changed hands so many times in the last 10 years its hard to keep up.

I knew when they started laying off all the "real deal" shop guys around 6-8 years ago who had been there 30+ years, That they were screwing up something.

But everything I've heard is just rumors. I've never actually been there except to drop off parts and this last week for the auction.

Finally got the door installed. The guy said it was back ordered for quite a while yet, even though i ordered it 2 months ago. He finally got tired of me waiting on it, so he went to another dealer and bought an upgraded one. It ended up costing me a few hundred more, but I'm not complaining.




Got a steal on some storage and benches. Bought 4 work benches, a desk/programming station, and a steel tooling rack for 185 doll hairs.

Some more pics

Too small by next week fer sure!


-------------

Think Snow Eh!
Ox

Ox said:

Too small by next week fer sure!

Click to expand...

My hope is to get this machine running asap, make some money quick like, and be able to build the lean-to to get the boats out of the way.

I don't ever plan on being more than a one man band (maybe a high school helper that needs summer cash), unless i have a product take off. But in that case, I would probably move the shop to another location.

But yes i need more room already. This is already worlds better than the single car garage i was working out of.

The utility company showed up early last week to install my new shop service. They mounted the transformers Monday, then trenched and ran line Tuesday. I came home that evening to a well juiced shop.

When I ordered service, I wasnt sure which service to pick; 208 or 240 with a high leg. After a post on here and some good feedback from the good people of Practical Machinist, I chose to go with 208 hoping for my voltage to be on the high side.

New shop electrical service

My actual line voltage turned up to be 212-214 (I'm not far from the substation, and there are a lot of people down stream). Pretty balanced and should run my single phase 220 class equipment nicely.




A friend of mine had been holding on to an extra compressor for me that he came across years ago. He has slowly been tinkering with it to get it in running shape. Even though the compressor is rated for 230v, it seems to start easy and run well on my voltage. He also had a mop sink that he tossed in as well.




I spent most of the weekend finishing the wiring for the compressor and installing air line. Also installed an automatic drain on the compressor tank, as well as some plumbing for the sink.

I opted to go with pex(with brass fittings, not plastic) for my air line for two reasons mainly:

1. It's what I had and plenty of

2. Kind of an experiment, because I've seen a lot of banter online about whether or not to use it for compressed air. In theory its more than adequate, but I'm sure people are scared and justifiably so, from the horror stories of using PVC as air line.

Time will tell...

I would use PEX over PVC any day. PVC for air is just plain dumb/careless.
Not a fan of galv. or black iron either unless you can insure perfectly dry air (pretty much impossible).
It is labor intensive, and cost prohibitive, but copper is my go-to for air. IME it is dead reliable.
I bet you will be fine with PEX. Shop is looking good!

I sold my single phase jet manual lathe(it was a hobby grade machine) in hopes of buying a 86 Takisawa TC-2 from Kansas. I took a Saturday and drove up early to inspect the machine. Turned out to be a little cherry with low hours. The previous owner said he bought it from a school in Nevada. When i got there, he had the power unhooked, but showed me a video of the machine running from just a few days prior.




The owner was nice enough to let me move the machine the poor boy way, with a trailer a winch and some skates. With help from a friend we made a trip.

Got her home in one piece, and set in place.



Ran some wire last week, and fired her up. Everything seems to work, I can get the spindle and axes to move, but for whatever reason it wont execute code from either MDI or from a program. It seems as though its looking for a door switch but if there is one, i cant find it.

Anyway, I am going to start on new thread on that topic later.

MotoX said:

Sometimes you gotta have good friends. Between borrowing the skytrack, the backhoe, and the trailer to fetch the material, plus all of the labor my buddies kicked in during this project, i couldn't have asked for more.

On a side note, bought a little flux core welder for ease of use and portability. The lightest welder i could find for this project happened to be a harbor freight flux core 125. Most of the structure is 11ga or 14ga so this little guy was plenty. For what it costs and how light it is,i don't think there was a better suited option. little sucker welds pretty nicely.

View attachment 301919

No matter how i rotate and upload these pics, it randomly rotates them again. Just a bit frustrating.


A couple weeks later, we had another go round with the structure. Got all of the trusses up, just needed to finish with the roof and side wall purlins and end walls.

View attachment 301920

Click to expand...

I'm sorry, those welds are going to fail in a strong wind. Of all the things to cheap out on you picked the structure.

plastikdreams said:

I'm sorry, those welds are going to fail in a strong wind. Of all the things to cheap out on you picked the structure.

Click to expand...

I thought that looked decent for 7018, then went back and read the 120V flux core part. Yikes.

I stick welded all 60,000 lbs of W beams and heavy wall tubing in my building. Mostly 7014 because I built in the pouring rain and 7018 would go to shit before I burnt the first rod from the box. 250 syncrowave got a workout for sure.

I am astounded with how strong stick welds are. A lot of bracing I took apart, just the little 1/2" beads had to be cut. They wouldn't break.