Decide the Stations Before the Equipment
A laboratory is a set of stations, not a pile of machines. Model room, wax-up, casting, ceramics, finishing. Decide which of these you will actually run in the first year, and equip those completely, rather than equipping all five partially.
Benches and Extraction First
These set the layout and the shipping volume, and both are expensive to change afterwards. Plan power and extraction runs before the benches are positioned; moving one later means moving all of them.
Grinding without extraction is not an option. A desktop suction base is the minimum; a dust collector at the bench is the right answer.
Equipment by Station
Model room: vibrator, model trimmer, vacuum mixer, base moulds. Wax-up: wax pot, carving pencil, waxes. Casting: casting machine, crucibles, rings, sandblaster. Finishing: micromotor, mounted points, polishers. Ceramics: firing trays, plates, pallets.
First-Fill Consumables
A bench with equipment and no consumables cannot work. Order the first round of pins, points, waxes, discs and brushes with the equipment. They fill space in a shipment whose volume is already committed, so the marginal freight cost is close to nothing.
Spares Before the First Failure
Carbon brushes, a chuck, a cord, a spare nozzle. These are the parts that will stop a bench within the first year, and they cost almost nothing to include now.
Settle Voltage at the Start
Tell your supplier the destination country before anything is quoted. It determines which versions of several machines can be supplied, and it is far cheaper to resolve before shipping than after.
