A few months back, we moved out of our apartment and into a rental house. Among the many great things about the new place was the two-car garage. With only one car, what’s a suddenly space-rich maker to do? Set up a workbench, of course.

Initially, I was planning to design a bench out of plywood that would tab-and-slot-and-screw together. I got as far as initial sketches in OpenSCAD before I decided it was just going to be too much work to design the bench I’d want to have. My search for alternatives took me here, which looked awesome, but was far too expensive. Luckily, that page lead me here, which introduced me to the world of galvanized steel fence posts.

Finally, the sweet spot: a linear construction material that’s strong, rugged, locally available, and best of all, cheap! Even the fittings (1, 2) are very affordable. (Unlike, say, galvanized steel threaded pipe, which can beggar you in a single hardware store trip.)

I settled on 1 3/8″ fence posts as my material of choice then got to designing. Feature-wise, I’m looking for a large worktop, with ample storage above and below, and lots of vertical space for pegboard, which will end up being tool storage. Add to that a securely-anchored bench vise, permanent power strips, and some bright lighting, and you’ve got my perfect “mostly electronics, sometimes random mechanical” workspace.

My usual process with 3D design projects these days is to buy samples of the components I’ll be using so that I can take measurements and make reasonable estimations for how things will turn out. In this case, I bought a single 10-foot length of pipe, one tee fitting, and one elbow fitting.

While I was at the hardware store, I bought some metal-cutting reciprocating saw blades so that I could actually cut the pipe I’d bought. I’d really rather have used a tube cutter, but the one I already own is 1/2″ too small, and a pack of blades is about 1/3 the cost of an appropriately-sized tube cutter from Amazon. I was pleasantly surprised by how quickly those blades chopped up the pipe: perhaps 45 seconds per cut, a totally reasonable amount of time for the number of cuts I had to make.

Over the next week or so I spent my daily commute time designing the workbench in OpenSCAD. Here’s a render of what I came up with:

Notable features:

• Everything is laid out around unbroken vertical tubes that run up the back, making up the legs and the rear supports of the top shelf. I figured this would lead to the strongest overall design.
• The fittings are necessarily taller than the pipes themselves, and since there are so few of them (at different heights, even!) it’s necessary to make a custom spacer/clamp component in order to make a level worktop. No worries, though, as I can easily just CNC all the spacers and clamps I need. Also, once I have the spacer/clamp thing nailed down, I can easily use copies of that part to make mounting brackets for all the pegboards.
• I found this great calculator called The Sagulator that helps you compute how much a surface of varying thickness will bow given how it’s supported, etc. This was really helpful in estimating eventual performance and influencing part placement.
• All the tee fittings have very convenient screw holes stamped into them for securing the “cross” part to the pipe. I’m planning to put screws in all of these to make the frame sturdier and easier to re-assemble if I ever have to take it apart. (For example, to move to a new house.)
• The worktop and shelves will still be CNC-cut, but mostly just because I want some rounded corners and “eyeballed” cuts stress me out. (What are the chances I would be able to maneuver a 7’x2.5′ piece of plywood on a bandsaw, anyways?) One major advantage of this approach is that I’ll be able to drill very precise pilot holes for all the spacer/clamp assemblies, making it much easier to assemble when all the parts are cut out.
• I’d like to make use of adjustable feet so that I can precisely level the whole workbench, but I haven’t yet figured out how to adapt commercially-available leveling feet to the ends of my pipes. I think I’ll end up CNCing some inserts that I can pound in and then thread in the leveling feet.

As of now, I think the design is basically finalized. I bought all the pipe and fittings I need and I’m ready to start fabricating. Stay tuned for updates on actual progress!