hackerfriendly

Laser HV repair

I’m in the process of upgrading the brain in the laser from a cheap (and recently deceased) Chinese special to a new design based on the open source Lasersaur. More on that later. I was right in the m…

2015-04-04

electricity > lasers

#don't look at laser with remaining eye

Tomorrow we bake

Tomorrow we bake

Milly is coming along nicely. I believe we’re over the vacuum difficulties. She’s buzzing along at a nice deep vacuum in the SPEC, INT, and GUN chambers. Last night the computer finally booted up…

2015-03-14

microscopy

#Milly #SEM

Milly’s computer is happy again

Milly’s computer is happy again

[Reconnect the broken black wire, and away we go! After several days of looking, the cause of the trouble proved to be a broken lead on a thermocouple line. On to debugging the vacuum system!

2015-03-03

microscopy

#Milly #SEM

Robots all the way down

Robots all the way down

Laser robot making wooden robots for an aluminum robot that makes brass robots… #slavetothemachines

2015-02-08

robots

#don't look at laser with remaining eye

Happy New Year, Mr. Lincoln

Happy New Year, Mr. Lincoln

["Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing." –A. Lincoln

2014-12-30

microscopy

#Meryl

SEM FTW: Meryl lives again

SEM FTW: Meryl lives again

Happy Holidays! Here is a 2mm stainless steel screw. It’s sitting on a standard, non-shrunken quarter for scale. [This screw is just 2mm across, and is about as long as the LIBERTY on a quarter. Here …

2014-12-24

microscopy > physics

#Meryl #SEM

Resurrecting a roughing pump

Resurrecting a roughing pump

Meryl was a little disheveled when she arrived at the shop. She had been in storage for a few years, and while mostly complete, she looked a little ragged around the edges. [Where do all those wires g…

2014-11-25

microscopy

#Meryl #SEM

A tale of two microscopes

A tale of two microscopes

I recently became the proud owner of a couple of discarded JEOL scanning electron microscopes. The big one (“Milly“) is a JSM-6320F from the early 1990s. The little one (“Meryl“) is a JSM-5600 from th…

2014-11-23

microscopy > physics

#Milly #Meryl #SEM

Acetone in the ultrasonic?

The answer is NO.

2014-11-02

chemistry

EVAC

(looks up code in manual) (hopes it’s not short for EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY)

2014-08-26

science

#SEM #microscope #technofear