Dealing With Depth Of Test Equipment On Standard Benches

[Dawn]

This never seemed to be an issue until we purchased a TEK 7600 series scope and couldn't figure what to do with it without placing it diagnal and eating up much of a bench surface. Our existing scope carts had been turned into carts to hold service monitors that while weren't anywhere as deep, still ate bench space the older ones didn't. Risers on most benches were slimming down from the old 16/17" depths to 12 or 10" and benchtops were still available in 30 and 34" depths on modular units. We still had the 16" risers and 34" benchtops from the 70's. Those were designed to accomodate an uncased or cased standard rack mounted unit on either level.

Then not only the scopes, but other pieces test equipment began migrating to near 30" deep falling around 27" without cables on the rear. This created a lot of headaches and rearrangement in the shop using steel shelving behind the benches and overall making a mess of the original floor layout. Short of going back to hand made wood benches that we abandoned in the early 70's, this was the best solution besides using utiltity carts meant for materials handling. In some cases, extended depth racks were used requiring expensive slide/glide sets

 Thankfully, in the past 10 years, equipment has gotten much smaller, much in part to electrolumenescent and LCD displays. Still, lab grade equipment was being designed with those depths and probably still is. Designers seemed hell bent to keep the front panels no larger then 17" and allowed for rack ears. Extended racks were often not an effective option and long bed carts quickly eat floor space.

 How did your shops and labs deal with this problem or were the workspaces already developed with these deeper form factors in mind?