[10 July 2018]

After over a week of racking my brains to beat this laser cutter problem, we have our answer. By this time I’d practically memorized that maintenance manual, and had been communicating back and forth with a technician who was traveling through Thailand, by email. Email here meant walking back and forth between the Poly and Queens to mooch a connection off the CPAP office. Trying to have conversations like this made me think on how hard it must have been to get anything done before phones and telegraphs. Can you imagine waiting weeks for an answer by paper? Phone lines are amazing. I guess back before all that, you just had to resign yourself to waiting, or just figuring it out on your own.

Anyway, after all these messages back and forth, the technician and I had come to a dismal conclusion. Either the laser tube was bad – which was highly unlikely, because it had been checked before being shipped from the factory – or the power supply had failed, despite indications that it functioning just fine. Both answers were uncertain, and both meant ordering another part and probably waiting an eternity for its arrival. There was a strong chance I’d be back in the USA before anything new would come, and without a working laser cutter, no Bilispec card parts. Without these parts, no way to train the Poly in making the cards, and without those cards, no point in training Queens how to verify their function with Bilirubin standards. It seemed all of my goals were now utterly blocked, so I’d already set to figuring out where else I could lend my help instead.

Once Andrew and Francis returned from out of town, I gave them the news. Francis sent one last email to the technicians, mentioning that we probably need to order a new power supply now.

Their reply: “but what about the power supply we sent you?”

Francis ran up to the package room at the Poly and asked whether there had been a second crate for us. Sure enough, it was there. It had been upstairs the whole time! We knew both a power supply and tube had been requested in the first place, but when we’d checked for packages, we’d asked for a package. We only received one, and accepted that. There’s a lesson about assumptions in there. Also, why on Earth the clerk didn’t mention a second crate at the time? I don’t know. But there it was.

Fast forward: we’re all ecstatic, the connectors have been re-soldered, the tube is in place. We power up the machine, directing the tube at a piece of crepe paper taped before the first mirror. The laser fired. Fire. The little paper burst into a flame! Blowing that out quickly and waving off the smoke, I thought to myself I’d probably need to pick out a different test material, but the important thing was the laser cutter was now working.

What a relief!

Rock climbing again tonight. Looking forward to blowing off some steam.

[05 July 2018]

Settling down now in the Polytechnic, I have been introduced to my first challenge: the laser cutter is currently a very heavy, very expensive desk. I’ll need to get it working again, before I can make the parts we need for the Bilispec cards here. I’ve been told the laser tube has gone bad.

Truth be told, I’d never even opened the back of a laser cutter before, much less learned anything about fixing one. But I’ve got a manual, and some bright friends. We’ll just have to take it one step and a time and figure it out. We had been waiting on the laser tube to arrive for a long time; for a long while all we knew was that “it’s in Malawi.” Quite different from two-day shipping and bar-coded tracking numbers which update a tracker you can see on the web. Back home I would have had UPS on the phone and hunting around in whatever warehouse it was last scanned into, but here, we just had to wait and see. Well it arrived late last week, but of course something wouldn’t be right, or this would all be too easy! The tube appears to be a smaller diameter, and the connectors are all wrong, but we’ve been assured by the manufacturer that this is the right replacement. We’re just going to have to improvise.

After fashioning some rings to hold the tube in place, the rest of the machine still needed prepping. The water for the cooling system needed to be replaced, and tracking down distilled water was not as easy as you might expect. I’m so used to getting it at the grocery store, that I completely trusted those 5L bottles that say “distilled” on them, but they actually had more dissolved solids than some of the other drinking water! Well, we drained and flushed all of that out, and eventually found some real distilled water at a laboratory supply outlet.  Once that, the exhaust, and the compressed air systems were all up, it was time to fire the up the laser!

Powered on, the machine whirred to life, and… nada.

The laser doesn’t fire.

I’ve got a list of ideas… but it’s going to a be a fun week of troubleshooting!

On another note, last night all the Rice interns went rock climbing! Apparently the local mountaineering club put together a rock wall behind St. Andrew’s Secondary School, and every Tuesday evening they get together and climb! We were able to rent all the gear we needed and join for just a thousand kwacha, or roughly a buck and a half. It felt so good to get up there and puzzle out these routes. I really missed this sport! The physical challenge has always been fun for me, but that puzzle is the best part, I think. The steps to take are obvious – they’re color-coded even – but how you take them is everything, and there is no solution manual, no easy way out. When you’re up there, you have to feel out what your body is capable of, and after falling off the wall a dozen times, the answer can come to you in a moment of inspiration or experiment, and suddenly make everything click into place. Out on a real rock face, the top has its own reward of a beautiful view, but it’s definitely having body and mind challenged together, and having beaten that puzzle, that makes it so addicting.