Interim Laser Cleanup Day - 11/2 @ 2pm

Howdy!

It’s looking likely that we won’t be able to have the official ‘Laser Meeting’ until the end of November. Since that’s too long to go without doing the maintenance on the machines, let’s have a quick meeting/cleanup day this Saturday from 2pm - 4pm in the laser area.

I’d like to get some input on ventilation upgrades (a personal gripe of mine for quite some time), as well as talk a bit about lenses and software on the computers. But of course, anything else y’all want to discuss is always on the table.

I hope to be quick with that, since it’s not an ‘official’ meeting, so most of the time will probably be focused on maintanence. Some things we need to do this weekend are

  • Check Lenses/Mirrors (if new ones arrive in time…)
  • Check Alignment
  • Level Beds
  • Wipe down and Vacuum machines

And time/motivation permitting

  • Open and clean ductwork (especially blitzen)
  • Play around with the rotary (I think it might be able to be tricked into cutting something… maybe).

If any of that sounds interesting, or you just want to get involved, or you’re bored, or have questions, or whatever else, come on by! As always, you don’t need to ‘be in the comittee’, rsvp, or be able to stay for the whole thing. Feel free to come and go as you can, the more people we have the more we can get done!

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I’ll bring cameras to film some of these processes.

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I can bring a microphone from home for clearer sound, or maybe @Kevin can set us up with a lavalier mic.

I have a zoom h1 recorder, and I’ll be snagging the laveliers from Michael tonight.

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I’ll see everyone today at 2pm! Come one come all.

As of last night all the lasers were working so I’m hoping to do some quick cleanup and be able to focus on more exciting things.

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The ductwork should be closer to the top of the list IMO. Donner has been backing up into the shop as well as Blitzen. I’ll help between classes if I have time.

That’d be awesome! I think ventilation is the root cause of a lot of our issues.

We did manage to clean out the intake for the blower on Donner, it should be back to normal. The grate was completely plugged and not allowing any airflow.

We weren’t able to find an blockage with the 2hp blower, IMHO it’s just not large enough to move air from both blitzen and big thunder, and lift it out the roof. Dampers will almost certainly be bought at the next committee meeting and we’re considering a blower upgrade for early next year.

As a wrap up to the cleanup day, I’d like to thank everyone who came out to help, Holly, Brad, Angela, @jrkriehn, @dougemes, @squaredroots, Allen, and anyone I might have missed!

Thanks to the big turnout we were able to clean all the machines, check alignment (big thunder is still in need of some work), clean the optics, level all the beds, take a quick look at the blowers, and get a lot of it on video. And we did it all in about 3 hours!

We’re planning on having the next committee meeting on November 23rd, it’ll go on the calendar this week. Be sure to come out so we can continue the discussions we’ve been having on training and system upgrades.

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