There were very exciting happenings in the rock mechanics lab yesterday. Our shipment from NER arrived. Off of an Air-ride truck, straight outa Hanover, came seven large items.
Some of them were very large items!
Stripping off the protective plastic you can see the Lexan-housed intensifiers (right) and main unit (left) which houses the electronics.
Also in that main unit, we will install the pressure vessel. Currently that steel vessel and the mounting plate weigh ~1200 lbs. They came in a separate crate.
Three wood crates came in all.
Once we took off the tops, we could peer inside. One box contained the main pressure vessel, one the CO2 gas mixing vessel and the final one the computer and miscellaneous supplies.
As soon as we got everything opened up and inspected, the "Traffic" team came over to help us move it all out of the prep room and into the rig room.
First lining it up with the double doors between labs, then taking it off the wooden shipping pallets.
And then moving each piece into its designated blue-taped space. It is a thing of beauty!
I can't wait to get started on some experiments. Thank you New England Research for building us our custom High P - High T Autolab 2000! And big shout out to Peter Kelemen for getting the funds to purchase this rig. Now let's mineralize some carbon!!
