So, I received much of my Christmas and birthday money and socked it away for a special time -- and that time came this week. I bought Tygon vacuum tubing, 6-80 adjusters and their bushings, and that got me thinking. It might be time to start thinking about manufacturing those optical flanges. So, I learned how to use FreeCAD and threw together my first 3D model of the flange that connects the optical assembly to the glass resonator.
Of course, I didn't want to spend hundreds of dollars having them made in 304SS until I knew I hadn't made a mistake, so I learned about Shapeways.com (Very cool!) and had one printed in hard plastic for a cool $50. It's getting printed now -- the leadtime is a little long at about 2 weeks, but I'm apparently in no hurry.
Today I drafted up the Optical Carrier piece that connects to this flange in about 10 minutes in FreeCAD.
Today I drafted up the Optical Carrier piece that connects to this flange in about 10 minutes in FreeCAD.