Omega forum members, I am in the final stages of building a new workshop within my main shop for watch repair. A good friend of mine that is an engineer for IBM has spent a fair amount of time in clean rooms environments, he assisted me in the design and construction. The complete shop is around 850 sq/ft. The decision was to make the cleanroom over 120 sq/ft as that is a requirement for some brands. There was going to be an anteroom that the parts cleaning machine would be in, as well as a polishing area. Some initial plans below: The final cleanroom size ended up being 132 sq/ft. The plan was for the cleanroom to be a positive pressure space, targeting 15-30 air changes per hour with HEPA filtration. Space for the construction cleared out. First batch of materials arrived. Little did I know I would be traveling to the home center almost everyday for the next month. First wall framed and up. one of the second walls is up and the lighting for the cleanroom is installed.
Looking good! I love building projects like this. It has been a while since I've done one, so I'll live vicariously through this job
Electrical rough in done. I didn’t get the holes for some of the wires exactly in the center of a few studs. The electrical inspector required steel plates over those areas. Might not be a bad idea anyway in a shop area where a work bench or shelves may be built in down the road The framing and electrical work I enjoyed. It took longer than I expected, but that ended up being a theme of this entire project.
Insulation and vapor barrier up, for noise abatement mostly. It probably wasn’t needed. All drywall up. The hanging of the drywall was a fair amount of work. The mudding and taping started. 3 sessions of mudding with some sanding between. Shopping for trim around the window between the cleanroom and main shop. I went with maple. The whole drywall process is messy, a barrier was put up to keep the dust in the construction area. Primer/sealer up on the walls.
Excellent point Al, I actually conducted some parts visibility tests. The two in the middle are out. That leaves the two outer ones.
My advice would be to go with the lighter one, even though I'm not personally a fan of that look. I have something that is similar to the second one in from the left in your top photo, but it's lighter in colour than that, and parts are very hard to see on it. I spend a lot of time on the floor shining a flashlight across the surface so things show up, and I think even the one on the far left is not going to be terribly visible - the lighter the better. Cheers, Al
For flooring in a watchmakers room would something like a slightly soft rubber mat be better than wood? Just in case a watch case is dropped
Well, generally it is assumed that you won't be dropping watches or cases, but the occasional part can fly out of your tweezers, which is why good visibility is key. I've never seen any sort of soft flooring used in a watchmaking shop.
In addition to the primer, the cleanroom received two coats of epoxy based paint. Epoxy paint is quite a bit more durable, and won’t produce any particulate. Normal wall paint is pretty fragile, this stuff isn’t. The downside is the expense at almost $200/gallon between the paint and the hardener that has to be mixed in. I went with antique white. It turned out looking pretty nice. The hole for the filtered air intake has been cut along with the air returns. Doors installed. The trim for around the window is being fit. It will come back out for staining and finishing. 8 inch spiral pipe for bringing filtered air into the clean room. air handler which has two filter along with a pre filter box installed. note: some of these pictures are not perfectly sequenced.
moving in. Nordic ash was the floor color I went with. There were a bunch of plain non grained pieces that we put under the area of the watchmaker bench. I had the doors painted by a local body shop. They turned out good Plenty of bench space and storage for parts and tools. Still waiting on the grilles for the filtered air outlets. the cleaning machine and sticky mats in the anteroom. The cleaning machine will have ducting installed to vent the fumes. polishing equipment, ultrasonic and steamer located in a room that will be under slight negative pressure while the equipment to in operation. The area in the main shop by the window that looks into the clean room worked out well for another bench area. I’ll have my lathes set up there, and also will use it for some electronics work. There is a lot of light that spills out of the clean room onto that bench. I’m glad I put the big window in. I’m going to have a company come in for epoxy floor coating in the main shop along with the polishing room floor.
Thanks! My friend that has been helping and I have been putting in a bunch of 12-14 hour days to get it done.
Impressive project, I'm really enjoying the photos. I see you have a sticky mat at the entrance. How far will you go with gowning? Cap and booties?
A full length lab coat and I have a separate pair of shoes that will only be used in the anteroom and cleanroom. That is pretty typical in the industry. I was recently at the Omega service and training center in New Jersey, that is what they do there as well. They also have sticky mats everywhere. you can see the type of flooring they had in both the training area and their workshops.
