After nearly half a year working in a dingy machine shop where the din of a milling machine, lathe and extruder made hearing yourself think impossible, Markforged moved into its new facility today. The contrast could not be more dramatic. The quiet, the space, the ambiance. Many of us worked over the weekend to ensure a smooth transition and by the end of the day we were essentially up and running.
I finally had time over the vacation to publish another photo journal, this time of my visit to Iceland.
The most used item in my photo studio is the camera stand. Far more convenient and versatile than a tripod it is the device that keeps my camera rock steady and positioned exactly where I want it. When I saw this stand on Craig’s List I decided to upgrade. My current stand also acquired on CL, will be donated to Markforged. Our new facility has ample space for a dedicated photo studio and it will be put to good use there.
Miraculously I was able to gather the kids for a portrait this afternoon. While it is true that I take many photographs of our family members, they are mostly candid shots and we actually have few formal portraits. Dressing up for a photograph is rarely tolerated. In this case, two of the three were already wearing flannel shirts so the third was persuaded to change into one. For Christmas this year I would like the following present from my children and spouse: a one-hour fully cooperative photo session with suits and ties and dresses and no grousing.
Joining the family for Thanksgiving diner this year are my mother and close family friend, Susan Reynolds, whose two daughters were unable to return home for the holiday this year. Jeanine and I completed the Concord 5K Turkey Trot this morning. A portion of the proceeds and an on site food collection are for the benefit of Open Table. We ate earlier than usual so that we could all volunteer at Open Table to serve a veritable feast to a community of guests that rarely enjoys such an abundance of food.
Boy and dog spending time together after months of separation. Hard to tell which one was more content.
Having just sold my lathe on Craig’s List, it is time to sell my collection of turning tools. After taking the time to carefully photograph them, I have decided that I am only ready to part with one of them, the bowl hollowing tool on the far left. I have almost convinced myself that I am going to buy a new lathe (albeit a smaller one) to justify the retention of the remaining set.
My mom arrived by bus this afternoon and was collected by her grandsons from the station. We are thrilled she will be sharing the holiday with us and feel fortunate that she remains so healthy and full of life. She is seen here modeling a new full-length down jacket that Jeanine acquired for her.
The boys have returned to the nest for the Thanksgiving holiday. Nico arrived late last night and Kyle early this morning on the red-eye. Both looked pretty exhausted and happy to be home. Nico was in dire need of a haircut which I was happy to administer. He is pictured here before and after.
All three kids had homework to do and it was fun to see them gathered around the dining room table again.
At the risk of boring followers of this blog with yet another build project for my shop, here is a nice little holder for my pliers. For a change of pace, I resisted the temptation to 3D print this part and constructed it out of Baltic Birch plywood. I also ordered myself a new set of Wiha pliers to replace my aging Craftsman set, some of which I have owned for 30 years. Be forewarned that my soon to arrive bright red and yellow handled plier set will be featured in an upcoming blog entry.
The feather board I designed a few weeks ago has received 667 views and been downloaded 44 times on Thingiverse. It was posted there by our marketing guys. As a result of its popularity, they asked me to print and assemble another one for use at CES (Consumer Electronics Show) where we will be exhibiting in January. I decided to create a larger version and used Kevlar instead of carbon fiber for reinforcement.
When I designed the dust collection system for my shop I ensured that every major piece of dust-producing equipment had a dedicated drop. The one thing I forgot to provision for was a simple vacuum hose. Why not use my 3hp cyclonic vacuum with 55-gallon bin capacity instead of my 6-gallon shop vac with expensive bags for general clean up. In order to make this happen I had to tap into an existing 8″ drop that services my table saw. Normally this would involve a lot of shopping around and cobbling together the right combination of pipes and flanges. With access to a 3D printer, however, the entire project was a breeze. It took 20 minutes to CAD a flange that would mate perfectly with the 4″ blast gate I use to control airflow. I also designed a step-down adapter to interface the blast gate with my 2 1/2″ vacuum hose. It took less than ten minutes to cut a hole in the existing pipe and install the components. The new vacuum line works perfectly with no air leaks and could suck the underwear off a nun.
Maya returned from Washington D.C. this evening and I was at the airport to pick her up. She had a tremendous experience at the Anti Defamation League National Youth Leadership Mission conference which she has been attending for the last three days. She shared her impressions and take aways during the ride home. Key among them was how exciting it was to interact with equally passionate kids from around the country all committed to building a society free of hate. Hearing from and speaking directly with survivors of the Holocaust was the highlight of the trip for Maya. Her generation will be the last to receive first hand accounts of what happened to the Jewish people at the hands of the Nazis. She also enjoyed speeches from Archie Panjabi (actress who played Kalinda on The Good Wife) and Taye Diggs (the actor who played Dr. Sam Bennett on Private Practice).
Having finally obtained our building permit, MarkForged is preparing to move to our new facility at Ten Fawcett near the Alewife train station. I am not going to miss the crowded, noisy, and distinctively low budget location we currently occupy. Using my car as a phone booth was fine on rain-free summer days but extending the necessary practice into the winter months would have been a drag. Sitting next to our frequently operating CNC milling machine has grown positively tiresome. Not having enough room for a proper workspace or meeting is probably my biggest complaint. If all goes to plan we will move to our new location on November 28th. As happy as I will be to make the transition, it is clear to me that the shortcomings and idiosyncrasies of our current location will one day be the subject of epic tales about our humble beginnings. I decided to take a few minutes and photograph the entire location for posterity.
The weather was magnificent this noon hour so I decided to walk to Felipe’s for a burrito. As I was returning through Harvard Yard, I paused for this photo of a self service leaf raking station, something I have never encountered before and wondered if it would work in our backyard. Minutes later, police and SWAT officers began appearing everywhere and two helicopters could be seen hovering over the campus. Everyone in the yard and students in four adjacent buildings were asked to exit immediately as the area was cordoned off. I later learned that a bomb threat had been reported and the magnitude of the emergency response was not surprising in light of the recent attacks in Paris. Fortunately the threat was deemed to be unfounded after a 5-hour search of the buildings.
Temperatures dropped significantly by early evening when I drove to Lynn to watch as the Concord Carlisle Girl’s Soccer team won the D2 state title.
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Maya had a busy day in Washington D.C. at her National Youth Leadership Mission conference. In the morning she heard from the ADL’s National Director, Jonathan Greenblatt, who discussed the importance of speaking up when you see injustice. The lunchtime speaker was Marion Ingram, a Holocaust survivor and civil rights activist, who talked about her experiences in Germany and the US. Workshops focused on the relevance of the speakers’ stories to the lives of the student delegates, to the delegates’ encounters with prejudice, and to their roles as leaders in actively promoting respect for all people. In the afternoon the New England contingent toured the Washington Mall before attending ADL’s National Concert Against Hate at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts later in the evening.
Maya is one of 60 students in the country selected as a representative to the Anti Defamation League National Youth Leadership Mission . Founded in 1913 “to stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment to all,” the ADL is now a civil rights/human relations agency whose mission is to fight anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry, defend democratic ideals and protect civil rights for all. Maya is pictured here with fellow students representing the New England Chapter upon arrival in Washington D.C. where they will attend a conference and visit the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
I am very fortunate to have a very spacious workshop that also doubles as my photo studio. Each year at this time I like to organize my shop in preparation for the winter months when I generally do most of my woodworking. Pictured here is one section of the shop which I like to think of as my hardware store. For the last several days I have spent an hour or two organizing everything so I can quickly find what I need. This morning I completed the task and will soon turn my attention to adding a new vacuum outlet to my dust collection system.
Even while using the navigation system built into my car, I like to use Waze on my iPhone for real-time traffic conditions and early warnings for speed limit enforcement. I have struggled for some time to locate my phone where I can easily see the screen without taking my eyes from the road. Not able to find a commercially available solution that I liked, I decided to design my own. The biggest challenge was finding a point of attachment for the stalk which positioned the phone cradle in the optimal position and at the ideal angle. I achieved a robust and easy-to-install solution by designing a perfectly sized insert for my center column cup holder. I used carbon fiber in the stalk and made two matching inserts for my other cup holders. This invention of necessity was good enough for first place at today’s Part of the Week contest. When Jeanine spotted the new addition to my car she immediately requested that I build her one.
Jeanine alerted me to a beautiful sunset that I caught at the last second.
I have been developing a prototype for an improvement to the way we dispense Nylon from a large spool. Our current approach uses a hub and axle. If a strand of Nylon filament comes off the spool, as it is prone to do, the print will be ruined when the Nylon gets tangled around the axle. The new approach uses rollers to support the spool. It does not prevent Nylon from coming off the spool but it self-clears every time with no negative impact on printing. This entire assembly fits inside of a dry-box which prevents the Nylon from being degraded by moisture.
One of our very talented mechanical engineers created this prosthetic hand on our 3D printer. Nylon is a wonderful engineering material but it is really hard to photograph in a pleasing way. I like the way this one turned out based on the background selection (a tool drawer where we store drill bits). It should be no wonder why it is so difficult to win Part of the Week when you are up against this caliber of design talent.
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Living in a house with hard water necessitates an annual regime of shower head decalcification. Normally, I submerge the shower head in a cup of mild acid (CLR) suspended from the shower neck and let it soak for several hours. Before leaving for tennis this morning, Jeanine, in the name of maintaining household organization, decided to put the new bottle of CLR that I purchased for this purpose into a place I would never think to look for it. Anxious to complete the task, I decided to remove the shower head and use the small amount of CLR remaining from last year in a smaller cup than needed for suspension at an angle. This proved to be a costly decision. As I began to remove the head, the shower arm to which it connects broke off at the drop ear elbow behind the marble tile leaving the threads inside the elbow. All attempts to remove those threads proved futile and the thought of replacing an unmatchable marble tile or cutting an access panel in the wall papered drywall from the other side started to enter my mind. Since either of these options would be extremely expensive I decided to perform plumbing surgery from the marble side. I used a diamond saw to make an opening just big enough to operate through but small enough to later cover with a standard faceplate. I tried to unsolder the elbow but eventually decided I would be more likely to set the house on fire than remove it. A recently acquired oscillating saw proved the perfect tool to cut the elbow off. At the hardware store I discovered a Shark Bite drop ear elbow which proved the perfect repalcement solution allowing me to press it onto the pipe rather than soldering. This was not how I had planned to spend my morning but I was relieved that a simple maintenance task did not turn into a major remodeling project.
I am a huge proponent of a working hard towards concrete objectives and celebrating as a team when they are met. My team recently achieved a very important production milestone addressing the top concern of management when I joined MarkForged less than 5 months ago. This afternoon the entire company left the office early for a celebration at the Lanes & Games bowling alley. Bowling is a ton of fun and great for team building. Few people are very good at it and almost all can eventually knock some pins over. The event was a huge success and I managed some nice photos despite the really challenging lighting.
My 12″ Makita miter saw was one of the top rated units on the market when I purchased it some 18 years ago. It is my most used power tool and I have easily made more than 10,000 cuts with it. It is a great tool in every regard but one. Dust collection is abysmal. Having just replaced the shop vac I use with my miter saw (the rest of my shop tools are serviced by a 3hp cyclonic dust collector), I decided to replace my Makita with a Festool Kapex compound sliding miter saw. Dust collection on this unit is unbelievable. Laser guides on both sides of the blade are incredibly convenient, especially for someone with poor vision. This miter saw is simply in an entirely different class than any other I have used or seen. My Makita will either go up on Craig’s List or be fitted with a new blade and relegated to cutting metal.
For 15 years my Fein shop vac has provided unsurpassed performance and reliability. Unfortunately, I managed to destroy the motor last weekend while operating it for an extended period of time while full beyond capacity with sawdust. My first instinct was to repair the motor but after disassembling the unit it became apparent that this would not be possible. I decided to replace it with an identical model but the company has long since “upgraded” it to a newer design. My research on the internet indicated that the new version was every bit as good, maybe slightly better, as a vacuum but that one feature which I rely on took a step backward. The unit features an auto on/off capability. You plug a tool, a miter saw in my case, into an outlet on the vacuum and it turns on when it detects that the tool is in use. Very handy. The newer model, however, will only support tools drawing 6 amps or less compared to 15 amps (what my miter saw requires) for the older one. Knowing this in advance, I salvaged the old auto switching electronics and packaged them in a standard electrical outlet box which I wired into my shop. I simply plug my miter saw and vacuum into the respectively labeled outlets and everything works perfectly. I also plan to recycle the main body of the deceased Fein as a pre-separator to eliminate the need for bag replacement on my new one.
It is a short walk from my office to Harvard University where I discovered a Farmer’s Market setup when I arrived at noon.
I was tempted to pick up my lunch here but forged on to Felipe’s for the best burritos you will ever find. I am trying to do a little more walking since the demands of my new job offer much less time for exercise.
I received this image taken by my good friend and long-time collaborator Bill Warner. He works around the block in the Greentown Labs complex. I joined him for lunch today. He introduced me to some of the folks there who are using our printer and we discussed photography, a shared passion. It is very nice to occasionally wind up on the other side of the lens, in this case, his brand-new 50mm f/1.2.
Followers of this blog will know that my soccer team has had a rather difficult fall season after winning the spring season championship. This morning (at 8am after a 1 hour drive to Mansfield) we played FUFC Gray which has already secured a first place finish for the season. My team finally played up to our potential and we were leading 2-0 with minutes to go in the first half when one of our best players was red-carded leaving us a man short for the entire second half. It was all we could do to hang on for a 2-2 tie. If we retain the poise and passion we showed today during our final match next weekend we stand a good chance of avoiding relegation to Division 2.
I treated Maya to a 3D showing of The Martian after returning to Concord. I knew she would love the movie and really wanted to be the one to take her to it. With strong female characters and a focus on science, I am hoping she drew as much inspiration from it as I did. No time for a photo today so I am posting an additional one from my outing yesterday.