shop course

I was delighted when Rana encouraged me to take a machine shop class here at Caltech—I've wanted to learn machine tools for seemingly forever. Yesterday and today I made this useless widget as the first exercise in the Mechanical Engineering department's shop "safety course," which included edge and side milling; threaded, clearance, and counterbore holes; and press-fit and slip-fit pins. Whee! Tomorrow: the lathe.