2022 was a year of transition. I received a post-doc fellowship at the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands to study cuttlefish biomechanics and develop new soft robots. We moved in July and are still working to settle in here in NL. The research has been altogether new and fascinating. I’ve been mentoring undergraduate students while they work on theses […]
Author: bkvo
How to swap the bearings in a Leybold Turbovac 150 turbo pump
The bearings went out on our reactor turbo pump. It started making a loud whine. A rebuilt Leybold 150 costs like $4000, so swapping them out myself seemed like the only real option. Here’s how it went: Step 1: Remove the heatsink and housing. Use a metric allen wrench to remove the housing. It’s got a rubber o-ring holding it […]
How to align a 4F optical system for digital inline holographic microscopy.
The goal of a 4F system in holography is to generate a collimated beam of single-wavelength light, shine it through a sample, and then magnify and refocus this light onto a camera sensor. When the collimated light hits the sample, it creates concentric rings around the objects known as diffraction patterns or Airy discs, like this: These diffraction patterns provide […]