This is what we saw while driving along the coast this week.

ESeal_01

Elephant seals!

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Lazy elephant seals. Don’t mess with them though–they grow up to 16 ft (5 m) in length!

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Fear the mighty elephant seals! They make a sound like a backed up sink but even scarier.

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This is how close we got to them.

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And today we worked on the Z Stage of the Thing-O-Matic. This part has two self-aligning bearings for the two steel rods that allow the build platform to move up and down. At the top center you can see the threaded Z motor flange for the step motor.

16StageZ

This part was very easy to assemble but it took me over an hour because I thought the Z motor flange was missing. I double-checked and triple-checked all the parts bags and boxes before starting to write an email to MakerBot Industries. As I was writing the email I had to check on which model step motor we had and that’s when I discovered that they had screwed the flange on the motor’s threaded shaft. I guess that seems logical…now.

Tomorrow we begin working on the Stepstruder, which is the part that ‘draws’ the 3D objects.

Sgt Marshmallow

Sgt Marshmallow

Sergeant Marshmallow is a cat. More specifically, he is a handsome cat. Sergeant is also the editor of this blog.

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