Browsed by
Month: October 2019

laser

laser

It is time to start packing up the shop. I’m using black plastic bins to put stuff in, indexed by content so at the new house I can unpack slowly (and in some cases keep stuff in storage). I think I will need ~60 of them based on the current consumption rate.

This process means pulling out old boxes that have been sitting on the shelf for many many years. I found a box with my old lasers, which my friend George Dodworth might find humorous. (and I have to assume that Clay Cowgill has a significant collection of these). They are old Helium-Neon glass tube lasers (633nm) , which when I was in high school was all the rage. [and that pesky swat team incident I had] 😉 I built a couple of power supplies to light up the tubes back then, and it was always fun to experiment with them. I did a few film holograms with them, which was seriously fun stuff that could be done even in a home lab. When I was in college working in the laser holography research lab we had HeNe tube just like these, and built a ring laser gyroscope using one (the sagnac effect). That 15mw one from 1990 was probably over $5k new.

It is amazing to compare that to the last picture of a few more recent Laser diode lasers, one 100mw Green, and one 1W blue.

House

House

Insulation is under way. We are using a mixture of materials for different parts of the application. The walls in the lower garage and shop start with closed cell foam, and have R19 batts applied on top of those. The primary purpose of the close cell phone there is to seal up the garage/shop from the rest of the house, and the batts are a material designed for acoustical isolation as well as the standard thermal properties. Interestingly the batts are somewhat eco -friendly in that they use a natural plant based binder as well as sand, so no phenol-formaldehyde.

Most of the main and upper floor walls are using blown in high density cellulose insulation, which with the 5.5″ thick cavity gives the walls an R19. There is some closed cell on the walls with concrete foundation exposure, as well as the areas under the metal roof (effectively actic-less). The main attic will be blow in with 18″ of cellulose (R60). Some of the longer walls have rockwool insulation for fire prevention.

The deck coating system is also getting installed. It is a sealed membrane system with a stainless steel mesh followed by a concrete like polymer material in multiple layers.

Event

Event

Fun evening at the Oregon Historical Society History Makers event. Kristin’s dad Andy Bryant, Chairman at Intel, was one of the 2019 History Makers. It was great to see him get this award, as Intel has done so much for Oregon.

One of the other History Makers was Colin O’Brady who did the Explorers Grand Slam (Climbing all 7 highest peaks on the 7 continents, plus going to the north and south pole). That is some commitment!