I suspected we might have bitten off more than we could chew when I saw the forklift head around the corner to the loading dock (below). The point was driven home for me as the suspension of the truck visibly rose once our new optical table was extracted. Nevertheless, with the help of some good friends in Lassonde, Environment & Climate Change Canada, the Petrie Machine Shop and over in Physics and Astronomy, everything managed to make it to the lab in one piece! Above, PhD Candidate Giang poses with the completed setup. We will be getting some excellent use out of this precision piece of equipment for years to come!
By Dr. Paul Godin
The PVL recently acquired a brand-new optical table; this new piece of equipment will help us with our projects for characterizing planetary surfaces and atmospheres. What makes an optical table unique is that it is incredibly stable; suppressing vibrations to minimize the impacts on experiments. One of the ways it achieves this is by weighing almost 1000 lbs. While this immense weight is great for experiments, it does make installing a table tricky, especially when it’s too large to fit through the lab door!
More details and lots of photos beneath the cut...
The table arrived flat on a truck, but the truck was too low to match the height of the Petrie Science building loading dock. This required a forklift to move the table from the truck to the loading dock.
Now that the table was out of the truck, the next step was to get the table vertical, so that it could be fit through the doors (also we can remove the pallet since it would only get in the way now). University buildings regularly deal with heavy lab equipment, so there is a crane that we were able to use to lift the table vertically.
Preparing to lift the table into vertical position.
Once vertical the pallet was removed.
Once the table was vertical , we transferred the table from the celling crane, to a movable crane. Now we can wheel the table around the building, into the freight elevator and up to the lab!
Carefully rolling the table to the lab.
Once in the lab, we needed to make the table horizontal again. This was done by carefully laying the table back down and repositioning the lifting strap to the centre, so that we could lift it off the ground horizontally now.
Repositioning the table and attaching the legs.
Once level and at the correct height, the legs were attached and the power bar/shelf system installed above the table, finishing off the installation. A big thanks to Petrie staff who helped us with the installation. We look forward to many exciting experiments to be preformed using our new optical table.
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