I haven’t been here in a while but I’ve been working on something the past few days and thought maybe some of you guys would find it useful potentially. It’s a magnetic workbench made out of HDPE. We have one here for taking our laptops out to control panels or when we are doing weekend upgrades inside existing equipment and it’s really useful. However, the company that sells them isn’t an “authorized vendor” so I’ve made drawings and put together a parts list from McMaster-Carr to build my own since they are an authorized vendor here at my work.
It could be useful if you have to do any field work or just to have a portable workstation around your shop or on your toolbox or something. I’m not exactly sure anyone here could use something like this for pressure washing, but who knows. It might just be handy to have at home. I am in the process of getting the stuff ordered to make my own hopefully in the next week or two.
Costs could be cut further by getting screws / hardware at a local parts store or just using normal screws instead of self-threading screws made for plastic. You could also downgrade from marine grade HDPE to a lower grade HDPE or even another plastic. Smaller neodymium magnets have less holding power but are cheaper, and ceramic magnets are much much weaker, but cheaper still, although I don’t know if a ceramic magnet would be trustworthy at all. Too weak probably, according to their ratings. Also the list includes a can of plastic dip for dipping the encased magnets in so that they don’t scratch paint off. It can all be tinkered with.
Here is the link to the product for $140
https://www.magbench.com/store/magbench-products/magbench-utility.html
Here are some pictures and some other DIY examples.
Here are the snapshots of the drawing file I made. I did this just so that I could make sure I had the right tee nuts and shaft lengths and stuff picked out. I wanted to make sure everything fit the way I wanted it to, and to make sure I got all the parts I’d need on one list. I couldn’t figure out how to just attach the full PDF, but I do have all these on a single PDF if anyone wants it.
Here is the list from McMaster-Carr for all the parts (if you download the image, it’s easier to read the part numbers and prices and stuff). Parts come to about $115 plus shipping, so not a big price difference and you have to do all the work yourself. But you get black HDPE instead of white/beige. And again, quite a bit of cost could be cut by not doing the plastic dip and using another screw alternative (and not buying 50 packs…only option from McMaster). Also, the two 12"x12"x.25" sheets make the back and the work platform. The 6"x6"x.5" is to be cut in strips to form the supports underneath. Just so that’s clear.
