Today was certainly eventful! The stepper motor driver, the controller for the laser, the laser power supply, and some assorted hardware arrived. Cameron says we have about 90% of the parts we need in house now and boy did he go to work today! I have a LOT of photos.

I’ve been fretting about how this behemoth would get turned right side up. Cameron assured me that he had figured out how to flip it on his own. Next are a series of photos that show, in order, how he did it.

Cameron took the drop down floor out before flipping it to reduce the weight. He is weighing each part because we want to know what it weighs in the end but to give you some perspective, it’s already heavy at about 350-400 pounds. I will share the final weight when she’s done! It’s hard to tell in the photos just how solid this thing is but it is built HEAVY!

It’s easy to miss but there is a yardstick propped up against the frame of the laser. I asked him to put it there as a reference point for size…she’s a bigg’un, and she is way bigger than I thought she’d be even though Cameron staked out the perimeter before the build began.

There is a long and storied history of the situations my poor spatial reasoning has gotten us into over the years along with my dogged positivity that things will most certainly fit and won’t be as big as Cameron thinks or that they will suit the scale of the room and/or the other furnishings in the room. Ahh, memories of the first coffee table I picked out! You’d think after 17 years and all of the things Cameron does to make dimensions concrete for me that I wouldn’t be surprised anymore but, the element of surprise springs eternal for me. It’s an ongoing source of amusement for Cameron ????.

Tomorrow will bring the installation of the gantry, the axis upon which the laser head will travel as well as the motors that will power it. Here is a photo of the motors for the gantry.

Okay folks, I promised you a progress packed weekend so stay tuned for more as we are only half way through-he has Monday off. I’m going to see if I can talk him into getting into one of the photos tomorrow.