One of the projects from a weekend in August 2026 was moving the big HVAC unit in the robotics area. Due to a miscommunication, it had been plunked down in the middle of a space we need. So I went in and helped knock a big dirty hole in the wall. Here's one of the other coaches on a ladder, drilling the hole that the vent goes through.

The prior hole just had a flexible tube jammed through it, but I figured I could do slightly better, so I designed an inside and an outside plate.

I fabbed up the inside plate on Sunday (plasma cutter FTW), then spot welded it together and powder coated it. It's a square steel plate with a rolled, slotted flange around a big round opening, powder coated white.

The outside was the next job: a laser cut grate with our logo on it, which I would also powder coat later in the week. That's the rest of this page.

The big round field is a honeycomb of small holes so the air can get through, with the gear and bulb left solid. That's a lot of holes to cut. Here's the laser head at work, close up and then from farther back.

The sheet on the bed of the laser with the pattern cut, and the bed afterward, with the little cut-out slugs scattered over the bed.

The pattern burned into the firebricks shows how serious a 1200W laser is: it did that even when out of focus by almost two feet!

And the finished cut, bare metal, before any coating went on.

I powder coated it in two stages. First a zinc primer, which should give it even more corrosion resistance than the topcoat alone.

Then the white topcoat.

And here it is finished, lying on the workbench.

It's on the outside wall, in an alley that few people go down, which is too bad. I still enjoy seeing it whenever I do.

It looks especially cool when it's backlit at night. I'll have to get a picture of that one of these days.

The Charlottesville office's version came first. It started on the computer in June 2022, where I was playing around with the design and wondering about proportions. Here's a render of one of the versions I tried (this one has Durham, NC in the corner).

In July I kept playing with the nesting software, which figures out how to pack the letters into the smallest space on a plate. It's kind of fun to see what it comes up with.

Then I cut the logo out of quarter-inch aluminum on the plasma table. The first cut failed, so I recut over the failure. It wasn't perfectly aligned, hence the slight irregularities, but it's a very good cut given that.

Here's the lowercase k after powder coating. I obviously put a bit too much powder on, but generally I like the way it came out.

I came back to the Charlottesville sign in the fall.

The Kevel logo, plus "Charlottesville, VA", on a navy panel: white aluminum letters, and a K made of two folded orange aluminum ribbons. I built it in the last days of September and the first days of October 2022, and finished it with a few minutes of sneaking away to the shop on the morning of October 3, since I was going to Charlottesville the next day. It still needed hanging hardware, and perhaps a few touches of paint to fix the flaws that probably only I can see.

More than a year later I made the one for James. In September 2023 I cut the parts on the plasma cutter, and here they are fresh out of the water table.

In October I put together a full-size layout out of taped-together sheets of printed paper on the floor.

Later that month I was at the makerspace and used the laser, the one tool I didn't have at home (I fixed that later), to make a hardboard template to help with aligning the pieces.

In November came the bending, and having done it before helped, though there were still a couple of things I had to remind myself of. The test bend went fine, shown here next to one of the laser-cut template pieces.

A second attempt a bit later that day went fine too.

The next morning it was coming along, with a single bent and polished k mounted on the navy board and still a bunch left to do.

I got the mounting hardware sorted out, so there are no more fragile 3D printed standoffs like the ones on the Charlottesville sign. Next up was powder coating.

And on November 26, 2023, it was done. Sorry it took so long, James.

Here's the design in CAD: two split-clamp blocks, each with a bore and clamp screws, joined by a bar.

And here's the aluminum bracket complete and installed on the Z-axis slide of the plasma table, holding the new machine torch. It was super, super nice using the Bridgeport for this.

Boring the bracket on the mill.

On August 27, 2022 I cleared out the area under the deck so I could move mill parts through it. As you can see, it was a bit of a job.

Attachment point for the chain hoist, installed. I never should have used that eye bolt: a forged eye bolt would have been much better from a load standpoint.

A trivial test of the chain hoist: a bucket.

Several pieces I moved myself, with various hoists. On September 3 I built a gantry (it has its own page) so I could take the top of the mill apart with a chain hoist. Here it is over the mill.

The same gantry from another angle, lifting the ram off the base.

Two stills from a video of the head coming down, in its lifting straps with a wooden bar through them.

The head, in lifting straps and hanging from an engine crane over a plywood sled.

The head being lowered under the deck with the chain hoist.

The table on the lift cart in the driveway, having just come out of the car.

And the scissor-lift cart carrying the table, hanging from the same hoist. It was easier just to lower the whole thing rather than unstrap it from the cart.

And done. And I mean done. I'm paying someone else to move the rest.

In September 2022 I started to clean up the table on my Bridgeport mill. It'll probably take a few sessions, but here's the "before".

The table is lying on the workbench, long and rusty, with its T-slots running down its length.

I was still in "get the mill fully restored" mode, so the next jobs were the upgrades that make it pleasant to use. The first was a digital readout. This is the DRO, still in its wrapper, with its first screen.

And mounted on its arm.

The scales' cables run down the side of the mill.

Next, a power feed for the Z axis, so I don't have to crank a 600 pound knee up and down by hand. This is the mounting ring for it, plasma cut and then drilled and tapped.

The Z power feed, installed and running.

In the summer of 2025 I rearranged the whole basement shop and the mill had to move to a new room. The hydraulic lift cart that made it easy to take the table off appeared to have given up the ghost, but I could still lift things with the shop crane.

The Bridgeport, still in its old spot, with a tub on the table.

The table, lifted with the shop crane.

The table hanging from the crane.

The table on its cart, going through the doorway.

The table in the new room.

The base was the hard part. I started out using a trick where you lift the Bridgeport by cranking the knee down with a board wedged under it, but switched to using a toe jack, which just felt a bit more controlled. With one side tipped up, I put some electrical conduit that I'd cut up underneath it, and I could actually roll it just by pushing on it.

First attempt, using the knee.

Closer.

The base up on the rollers. I can move it easily by myself using a crowbar when it's on these.

The base coming down the hall. A little help from my friend Andrew.

Things went well with Andrew's help, but honestly the whole thing went so well all that did was speed me up a bit. Once it's up on pipes it's easy to move: just stick a crowbar under it and you can lever it around, an inch at a time. Which was great, because I wasn't sure I liked where it was, and it turned out I could move it a few feet by myself.

In the new room, more or less.

And then a second, shorter move, into the corner, on July 13.