The end of this week has been just as great as the beginning was. It has been cold, rainy, and windy outside, and lots of work to be done inside. These past few days I have been continuing to work on the last few parts that I have to machine for the calibration setup. Today though was by far the best "engineering" day I have had so far. The last part I had to make was one I had to machine on the lathe here at UNIS. Now the other two machines that I used (milling machine, and drill press) had probably gotten used within the last month or so. For the lathe I am not sure the last time it was used. Before I could even get it going I had to wipe the dust off of it and oil it such that it would move properly. The best part about it not being used meant that no one here at UNIS knew the particular ins and outs of this old machine. The great thing about these machines is that they were made to last forever, it is certainly old technology but if it gets taken care of it will truly last forever. These machines are purely mechanical and so when anything breaks it is a simply matter of getting to the issue and fixing it. Now I realize some of you might not know what a lathe is and have zero idea what I am talking about so..

The machine in the corner is the lathe. It is for machining rods and circular parts. In this picture the back of the lathe is open because I had to do some work on it. One of the parts that I had to make required external threads so I had to get out this bad boys user manual and figure out how to cut threads on it. It essentially work by providing the cutting tool with a fixed longitudinal speed. With the tool set into the rod the appropriate distance you can pull the tool along the spinning rod and create different pitch and size threads. To do this on this machine I had to reassemble the gears in the back of the machine in order to be able to produce this fixed longitudinal speed. So that became my first fun engineering task. The next task was to actually make the blank rods up. This took more that I thought due to the fact that one of the threads needed to be an M4 thread. Meaning the rod had to be cut down to a diameter of 4mm. On top off that you had to keep the rod straight during cutting because an off centered part is useless. So here is some of my progression.

The rod all the way to the left was my first attempt, but after placing this rod onto the lathe I quickly realized that the old tools were no match for this stainless steel, so I switched my next attempt to aluminum. Then the rods show the basic blank I had to make then the different sets of cuts I had to make to end in the the final product on the right. The top of which has the M4 thread and the bottom has a 1/4 20 thread. The fun part in this process came in when I starting preforming the top cut and breaking the blanks. Then what better to do then to think back over my engineering career and realize that I could apply something I had learned in school! What I ended up having to do was taper into the small diameter because when I would go directly from the 1 cm rod to the 4mm rod it created what we would call a "stress concentration". Oh ya, one thing I learned last semester that I never thought I would use, nothing better than realizing how practical a lot of things you learn in engineering are.

So I have made up all the parts for my setup and am very pleased with how everything has come out. Once I have it all assembled I will be sure to post some pictures and see if I can bore everyone even more with some more engineering jargon.

On a different note, I normally have my lunch outside my office in a set of chairs because I can look out on to the beach and the mountains behind UNIS. Today I got a special treat in the form of an innocent tourist. With the tourist boats coming in everyday they are always wandering around the town, yet few of them are brave enough to step past the warning signs and venture onto the beach. If you have read all of my posts then you might know what dangerous lerk on the beach, if you haven't look back for that post. Essentially this is the nesting area of the Arctic tern that has to be one of the most territorial birds I have ever seen, due to the fact that they dive bomb you. So this innocent tourist when down to get a better picture of the water but got more then they bargained for when they were attacked by at least three birds. These birds begin to dive bomb you as soon as you step near their nest and she was right in the middle. Rarely do you get truly hurt from these birds besides a good peck on the head but it is more of the confusion that is fun to watch. the birds make a slight whistling noise as they fly out of the sky and it is enough to scare anyone. The most interesting part of this whole event became note only the tourist complete lack of knowledge of these birds but also their persistence to stay once attacked. Overall it made for a very entertaining lunch, and another great part of a productive day. I will end with a picture from these wonderfuly cold rainy days, all of which I blaim on the constant tourist boats.