Re: Is your Hobby Shop located in your home?
My machining hobby was never planned to happen. I was a licensed contractor for over 20 years and I built a 3000 SqFt warehouse next to my house for my contracting busiess. Just a tiny little office with a file room, back office, communication closet and a bathroom that I never finished. Still have to go in the house. I only ran a 100 amp service to my warehouse. Figured I'd NEVER even need that since the AC for the office was the biggest load. Thought I might run a few hand tools or an air compressor at most in the warehouse. A few computers in the office. Now there are 3 lathes, 6 mills, a CNC router, 3 drill presses, 4 soon to be 5 welders, and a 5 grinders in the shop. Along with that is a hard plastic injection machine (benchtop), a couple microwaves for cooking some plastics, an oven for powder coating, and melting pots for pewter, lead, and tin. Its common for their to be 3 mills running simultaneously, and not un common for me to have 4 running. I often do work on one of the lathes while the mills are running, but all lathes are manual so only one at a time with them. When I get a few machines going at once I have to mentally tally my electrical budget and account for the possible peak load of the air compressor or air conditioning compressor kicking on. I "almost" never weld when anything else is running. Occasionally I'll do some light gage MIG, but I have to remind myself there is a reason 2 (soon to be 3) of my welders require a 50 amp circuit.
If there is anything I would take away from this is if you ever build a shop calculate your service sub panel for twice what you think you could ever need, and then double that.
Bob La Londe
http://www.YumaBassMan.com