More plug milling

The model yacht plug we're making is milled in three stages. First a rough-cut, then a finish-cut which cuts the plug 1 mm undersize. Then it's coated with a thick layer of tooling gelcoat. What you see above is the final milling pass where the gelcoat is cut down to the final shape. This way we're hoping the final plug will require a minimum of painting/sanding before use.

Lester Gilbert has some new Pikanto pictures on his site. Eventually this project will produce boats like that, but with a deck which is simpler to mould, and with a process we hope to streamline as much as possible.

Links - February 6, 2009

Links - January 30, 2009

playing with entangled beads in optical tweezers

Were stretching a 13 kb DNA-construct between two optically trapped beads. This isn't a video of the experiment itself, but of some entangled beads we found in an old sample. The beads are 3 or 2 micron in diameter, and we hold on to the middle big bead with the optical trap while moving around the microscope stage. Hydrodynamic drag stretches out the chain of entangled beads. Not much, if any, scientific value, but a fun video nevertheless.