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The BLAST pivot completed assembly this morning. It never gets disassembled, so this is the only chance to see it (well, except that there’s a second pivot to build for Spider, but let’s ignore that). Barth, Laura, Juan, and a machinist (Frank?) did the assembly. Pictures courtesy of Juan. The process is actually quite tricky […] The cryostat joints have been finished. These live at the sides of Spider and the cryostat elevation bearings will live on top of them. Another interesting discovery is that when you give inserts enough sunlight (it was sunny for a few days before the April snows started…) then it will sprout a strange flower. I […] In lieu of pictures from putting the inner frame on, here are pictures of it in its put-on state. This also shows the liquid balance system which can be used to dynamically balance the inner frame. Last of all there are pictures of a hex cell platform to mount electronics to. It’s not super interesting […] The first two of Juan’s Spider joints to be delivered. Marvel at their glory! These are the tips, which live at the very front at the edge of a little scoop, and the shoulders, which live between the back joint and the cryostat joints on either side. Spider will be made out of 13 joints, […] Since BLAST arrived yesterday (where yesterday is last wednesday), it’s time to assemble it. This is the reaction wheel mounting process. Mounting the inner frame is far more interesting, but there are no pictures of that. Maybe next time. Or, rather, it arrived…last week. But today I got the pictures that Juan took (thanks Juan). I learned that big aluminum gondolas are hard to remove from trucks. The pictures tell a better story than I can. Images taken (in June 2008) with my prototype star camera on top of the old test gondola for Spider. In principal, the star camera should stay fixed on the sky as the gondola rotates beneath, and the degree to which it doesn’t appears as streaking. The pictures show that conditions were poor for the test, […] This isn’t really relevant to integration, but this is a picture of BLAST at float from 2003. I have hacked it up to use as the site’s logo, and this is the full size version. It’s not very good since it was taken with a telescope. The dangly bits, other than the gondola in the […] So, I’m setting this site up about a week after BLASTpol has started integrating in Toronto. There are a few pictures, and over the next few days I’ll see what I can dig up from offline archives. |
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