Delete comment from: Ken Shirriff's blog
Around 1978, I worked at the Delco Electronics plant on Hollister west of Storke Road in Goleta, California, manufacturing heavy aluminum boxes like the one shown in the first image. I was told the boxes held "the Titan IMU" (most people still had clear memories of Gemini in those days, so "Titan" didn't require explaining). From your post I deduce that I must have been working on RIVET HAWK, maybe late in the program manufacturing the spares or the like. I was not an engineer at the time, so I have little to add technically except a few odd reflections...one of the manufacturing steps for those boards was to wash them in a dishwasher, an ordinary commercial dishwasher that was installed on the manufacturing floor. And the manufacturing process for the heavy aluminum boxes was the most incredible scut-work: the boxes were "screwed and glued" with some type of metal adhesive, and the metal had to be clean, chemically clean. So each panel of the box was attached to a hoist and then sequentially dipped, first in a vat of hot dilute acid, then in a series of vats of nasty solvents. Anyway, thanks for the nostalgia trip and the brilliant work on this blog.
Jun 25, 2021, 12:41:22 AM