Tuesdays...

Now that yesterday's published.

We arrived at the machine shop at eight this morning, with sheet metal haphazardly strapped to the roof of our ancient shuttlebus. Papa and Michael again met us there, and brought with them a few more students from KNUST -- Phillip, a welder and son of a welder, and a few of his friends whose names I'll remember as soon as this publishes. Aimee and I were able to jigsaw-puzzle three units onto our single half-sheet of stainless, which cut incredibly easily with the aviation shears I brought. Papa and I set to cutting parts, which Aimee then hauled over to the drill press.



Phillip and I were able to set up a jigsaw station and he took over cutting the interior cuts -- such as the vending area in the lid, and the coin mechanism location in the case. Before I realized it, we had an entire machine shop humming out vending machine cases.

Phillip hard at work.

All these hands made light work, and I found myself wandering aimlessly a few times -- So I took pictures of big shiny machinery. Some of the equipment in the KNUST shop is truly impressive, obviously the biggest ones are the coolest.

Massive German drill press --  Aimee for scale. The main column is 12" diameter solid steel.

Partially uncovered 12 foot bed lathe. For scale, the 4-jaw chuck mounted is 18" diameter. The workpiece is near eye level for me at 6 foot.

A truly massive vertical mill -- both tables are 2'x4'. I estimated the capacity around 5 foot cubic. The top of the head towers around 12 feet off the ground.

By mid morning, we'd cut and drilled all three sets of components, and were faced with our largest challenge yet -- how to fold the cases without a sheet metal brake. As I pantomined the device I wished we had here in Ghana, Phillip realized that there was a fifty year old brake in the shop next door.

First case cut in Ghana -- this was a good moment.

Fruits of our labors -- a bunch of finished parts

Sheet Brake!

Whoa, those actually look like cases.

With the sheet brake and the number of hands on the project, we went from sheet of steel to three cases in about four hours. I assembled a coin mechanism in the case to demonstrate, and asked Phillip to run a 50 Peswa through. I think this was the moment that the KNUST students suddenly realized how this all works, and they ate it up -- they were incredibly excited to work the mechanism, the ratcheting click of a coin going through is quite satisfying.

Somewhere during the morning, an unidentified entrepreneur contact of Ron's who I know only as "George" stopped by the shop. He was equally, if not even more excited as Ron described the purpose of the project. He's very interested in continuing the experiment after we leave, and I'm sure Ron knows more about that, as will I in the future.

After how well everything has gone, I'm convinced there's a nightmare somewhere up ahead -- Murphy works on this side of the Atlantic as well. Tomorrow we'll be hunting for and cutting wooden components, so there'll be plenty of opportunities to knock on wood, as the saying goes.