Cost of home built benches

[Mousehouse1]

I didn't see any past posts on this subject and thought it would be interesting to see what some have spend on their benches.

I have around $1500 in mine. I had to redesign some of it which cost me time and money. Plus some of the original parts I bought were junk and had to be redone. Over all if I had to do it again I would have around $1000-$1200 in it. I am pleased with my results. Plus I went digital on my bench which was one of the best ideas I had. Saves a lot of time and headache.

[DaveW]

I'll let you know in three weeks. I am starting a new orifice bench with all the bells and whistles.

Dave

[Mousehouse1]

Are you using an orifice disk? If so, how many holes are you going to have?

If I built my own manometers and did a few other things differently I could have built my bench for under $500. But I wanted to go digital and added a few more motors. But I am happy with the cost. It is still a lot cheaper then buying a new one. Plus I have learned a lot along the way. I have enough wood to build another one. I might cut out all of the pieces and sell them. I might make another one and scrap the one I have. Who knows what I might do. It is starting to cold here so I will have plenty of time to think about what I want to do.

[Nick]

Well under $500 here. I built my own manometers, and machined all of my own parts. I could build this again for about $400. As usual you end up buying stuff that does not work or does not do what you want. I want to go digital to. I see no reason someone could not build a bench for under $1000 that is as good as a superflow 600. I have been comparing my head tests of this 289 with ones I have found on the net and am very close to what others are seeing.

As for orifice sizes, The next one I build will be 50 100 200 400. 750 total capacity. More than enough for any auto head.


Nick

[Thomas Vaught]

I am on my 14th flow bench in the last 20 years.

I have built simple hand made Pitot benches, mass air benches, orifice benches, and laminar benches over the years.

The first benches were some of my own initial learning efforts and cost about $300 by the time I bought the Sears vacuum cleaners.

The mass air stuff cost more and I had to pull some strings to get the transfer functions for the meters. The same type Sears vacuum motors were used.

The orifice benches were more for friends and cost more as we used 246 manometers, dwyer vertical manometers, and the 115923 vacuum motors.
Averaged from $1000 to $2000 for the benches.

The laminar benches used high dollar laminar elements and depending on cfm and how good of a deal I got cost between $1.00 per cfm to $3.00
per cfm (new or used laminars). Then there was still the cost of the 115923 motors at $99.00 each
and several times we used 12 motors. Several thousand dollars here with top notch cabinet work.

The last bench I am working on will have a sheet aluminum structure and frame and will have 12
motors. It is in process. It may be mass air or orifice based.

Tom V.