Adapers again

Hans came back last night with the adapters, each one machined perfectly by the scripts machine shop, all except one because I was off on my request by 0.005". I ended up spending some quality time with a die grinder, paddle sander, and socket #3 in order to get that adapter in.
Here is a shot off all the smaller adapters in the secondary. You can see that they all fit in, but there was still one problem, they did not all fit all the way into the sockets.









The GD guys fixed this by grinding a bevel on all the adapters. Six or so hours later, all the adapters fit in, but we then ran into another major problem.
















After Al tried to bolt in the adapters into the primary, he found that the tapped holes into the primary where nowhere near straight. This was a pretty dark moment when I saw this.









The solution shown here, basically drill out the adapters, and use washers instead of a countersunk hole.

One large pile of steel spaghetti later, and most of the adapters are finally in. There are still a couple left to do, and the GDSatom guys will finish them tomorrow, beginning at 6am! BZ is supposed to show up tomorrow, and we should finally install he mirrors.











On another note, Marius has joined us, and he drove his Focus up to the site in second gear with his car filled with 80/20. True to form, he had not eaten all day.

Two SZA observers from Huntsville visited us and Esra took this rare photo of me to prove that I am actually here. No wonder why the GD guys call us the geek squad. Those enormous sunglasses are giving me the best tan lines. Notice how clean Marius looks. Thanks Esra!