A laser-guided tool for the machine shop
(5) has a genius IQ. He’s like 168 or so. I’m just normal.(6) who talked me into trying college. When I started, I didn’t stop until I had my doctorate. I’ll stick to something if it seems worthwhile.(7) in education, specialising in aviation, and I worked for a while on electric(8) California State University, Fresno. I was watching our students struggle with the edge finder, and I’d been using a laser pointer in the classroom. I thought, ‘Hmm, I wonder if I could mate the two together?’(9) You put our laser edge finder in the quill and move the table until the beam makes a line down the side of the workpiece. You’ve found the edge, that quick.(10) Being that I was already 65, they put you at the top of the list, figuring you may not be around by the time they go through their normal process. Around the same time there was a hobbyist show for machinists in Visalia, just south of us. My wife and I put 300 of our units together. We sold out in hours and spent the next couple days just taking orders. So we knew we had kind of a hit.(11) say, a Boeing machinist reads magazine, sees our ads, and says, ‘Oh, hey, we could use that.’ We’ve sold eight different Boeing locations our laser tools. For every wing that’s built, there’s a jig that has two of our units on it. You can imagine a 20-metre-long water-jet table with a carbonfibre, raw-material wing worth about $1.5 million. They use our tool to make sure it’s centred before they commit to cutting.
