Atom Man?

Oh yeah. Memories of the Black Hole, the thrift store for LANL before Grothus died. Was he careful? Not really. Was he ethical? Definitely not. Was he memorable? Absolutely. Delighted to see someone carrying on that questionable legacy.

Something called a Quanta Ray is stacked on something called a Spectra Physics Model 2040E, next to the good humor ice cream freezer.

15watt argon laser

Have they got any phased plasma rifles? Maybe something in the 40 watt range?

This tag seems vaguely ominous.

Nah, just bureaucratic. "Don't use that equipment without a Standard Operating Procedure.". I.e. I don't care how cool that thing you just bought is, it ain't legal till it's proceduralized.

I already want one!

Oooh! I wonder what’s in here!

Something nice, I'm thinking!

It might be worth buying that as a Halloween prop. Outfit it with speakers to omit ominous growls, and motors which make it shake and lurch.

It makes a tepid cup of tea.

Vibes:

With a soupçon of:

Ack forgot the alt text! Mulder and Scully staring at something strange

Maybe @nuclearanthro.bsky.social knows.

Nothing too fun for that shape.

suitcase nuke?

Ohhhhh yeah you’re near Sandia — so much of that stuff makes sense now

Anybody else flashing back to 'Return of the Living Dead'?

A vintage MacGuffin, no doubt

Eek! I wonder too, but not sure I want to find out. Seems like potentially scary stuff. I’m tempted to make a story out of the situation.

Goddamn, an Epson Stylus Pro 9900. If I thought I could get it working…

There is a large trailer on blocks, naturally. Appears to be using something from Oxford Laser to keep from rolling.

Pretty sure this one is a water chiller. I've used them on other water cooled equipment, and they all sort of look like that.

Anybody know what this does?

Awesome Star Wars prop!

It’s a moisture condenser, from a moisture farm!

Ursula! Please please buy this tower and turn it into a planter of some kind.

Power transformer. 120v-400v.

It says it's an auto transformer. Mine is much smaller. 240V but only single phase. I use it when I'm working on old electrical things to isolate the motors from the electrical supply. It protects the supply and me from unexpected electricity. That ones for 3-phase supply used in industrial motors

Max amps = 84 is eye opening

On further thought I'm wrong. Mine is specifically an isolating transformer and that one isn't. As other comments say it's to change voltages.

Do you need more volts? Fewer volts? Both at the same time on different circuits? This is for you!

A Perkin-Elmer Spectrophotometric Detector! I have no idea what that does! Somehow related to light?

Oh, I know what that is and can explain it if you'd like! (Detector from a spectophotometer I'm pretty sure)

There’s a random roll of what looks like foot wide industrial fabric tape back here.

Pretty sure I've seen stuff like that used on small conveyor belts and slightly smaller stuff used as belts on pulleys and things.

Odds on it having asbestos...

Well, we have courted heat stroke enough for one day and are going to run other errands now.

That place is a post-apocalyptic larp organiser’s wet dream 👀

Thank you for taking us on this journey

Runner for a really long dining-room table!

though for a sec that was a fire hose

oh I have to find a place like this near me

Roof flashing?

This is so "deserty". My very-wet-very-cold-weather mind only goes "This cannot work, it will all die by the next rain/next snow. The wood! the wood!"

That looks like fire hose to me.

OH! Of course!

Only one way to find out. Start a fire.

Traction belt, used to connect your engine to your engine.

MACHINE not second engine.I worked with thresher and sawmill powered by this.

I would thought it's an old fire hose.

Nope, old fire hose. Very useful but very different.

Measures light absorption of a sample of something at different wavelengths. Very common equipment in a chemistry lab.

Ah, someone already explained it XD

And biology. We use it to tell how much yellow or blue is in something. Occasionally pink.

We had a spectrometer for assessing the amount of carbohydrates in our processed samples of woody material. It was not nearly so fancily-named nor large.

We use it to calibrate our liquid handler (how much dye did it transfer)

Sounds like an astronomical instrument. Spectrophotometry is the measurement of the intensity of light at different wavelengths eg. the determination of the temperature of stars by measuring their colours. Incidentally, Perkin-Elmer made the Hubble Space Telescope’s wonky primary mirror.

Probably an infrared spectroscope. We used to have one at the place I did my PhD.

Fun fact! some of the maths is called Beer's Law 😁

Yes! It shines light through your sample of Stuff and tells you how much is absorbed. And then you do maths to find out how much Stuff is in your sample. Modern versions do the maths for you.

Yup. Detects light at different wavelengths, usually in the context of measuring what wavelengths a solution absorbs.

You shine white light through a sample and detect what passes through. Whatever is missing is characteristic of the chemical structure of your sample.

Or a specific wavelength of light.

Tells you exactly what colors of light it's seeing.

Going to guess it’s a variable (power) transformer?

Yeah, big variac. Varies the voltage of an AC supply.

Husband says the variable autotransformer takes an input voltage & lets you vary the output voltage in an efficient manner. This is...a big one.

it's an electrical transformer! the auto here is for self instead of automatic. it means that it only has one winding, as opposed to the other kind of transformer.

a transformer! quick, check if it's an autobot or a decepticon!

Yeah, if there's any plutonium, or a Mr Fusion lying around, let me know OK?!?

Looks like it’s a transformer, probably from a utility line. Pretty cool! www.specialtyproducttechnologies.com/superiorelec...

No, but I feel like it would be cool to have flowering vines growing from out of the holes.

Looks like a bathroom caddy to me.

A power transformer with a 240V input and a variable 0–280V output?

Might come in handy for revitalising stitched-together corpses, Frankenstein style.

I watched a man make a big one of these on YouTube. He then used it to shoot beams of electrity that blew stuff up. (I can't find the video now...)

I believe it is a device for taking in power of the kind that you usually see in electric dryer hookups (240V, 3-phase power) and turning it into AC power at any voltage from 0-280V.

It autotransforms powerstats variably, I imagine.

I was gonna say the same thing

William

😘

Williamous Frankonius

I want to cut all the stuff off that's sticking out above the top platform and put a plant on it or stick it by the front door as a place to put things when you're carrying too many things.

No, but it’s More Than Meets the Eye anyway. Cause of the Transformer.

It takes a voltage and turns it into a variety of other voltages; it only has a single winding (the "auto" in autotransformer) which means that it's cheaper than a regular transformer but the output voltage is not isolated from the input voltage like it would be in a regular transformer.

It is a power transformer. It looks like it runs on a 120/240 three phase four wire system. I have 0 clue from the plate what voltage it converts the voltage to though.

Update, looked closer. It steps the voltage down. Looks like it probably has a way to adjust the coil taps to dial in whatever voltage you want between 0 and 240

interestingly, the output is listed as 0-280V while step-down transformers are common and step-up ones aren't rare, in my experience you don't see many with a 0 to 1.17x range

I clearly need to go see my eye doctor a few months early this year. Lol. But yes, that is a bit weird! Mainly because the coil ratios for stepping up and down are "one way" but clearly the sum total of the coils on the secondary side is enough to step up a tiny bit with settings to step down.

Water vaporator?

911tooling.com/products/sup...

It looks like Really Powerful variac: Why is Auto-transformer (variac) called transformer?? share.google/8XngrLnBdqlD...

I think that's an old variac!

It's takes big volts and turns them into smaller, ampier volts.

I want to lick it

I'm pretty sure that is sentient and menaced the crew of the original Enterprise at some point

I really want to go to this place.

I was so annoyed there no Civil Defense water drums for sale when I last went. Have you met the adorable shop cats yet?

If you had a way to get one from Arizona I can probably source something similar that hasn’t been left outdoors for cheap within a month or so.

Map/plans drawers would be too much for me to resist.

You have a stronger will than I.

Woah 😳

more civilized age 😂😭

GET IT OUT OF THE SUNNNN NOOOOOO!!!!

Yours is a wholesome thread

Uhm. This place is amazing?!?!!!!!

And terrifying!

Even More-Interesting Tetanus?

I believe they named it Andromeda Strain

Check to see if it’s Indy ;)

Maybe you need to have some radiation protection?

Knock on it and see if it meows.

Curious Marc has entered the chat...

Alien remains?

Paddington the Bear?

this is the actual Raiders of the Lost Ark warehouse. don't open any unmarked wooden boxes

If I recall correctly that particular box is exactly what USA needs right now

as long as you handle it carefully. even if you haven't set yourself up to deserve a good face-melting, it may or may not (depending on your views) still have a serious kick to it

Famous last words.

Has anyone tagged @funranium.bsky.social in this thread yet?

He’s here!

So many people and I was already all up in this before everyone else tagged me.

I feel like we need @funranium.bsky.social somewhere here

Oh, I'm in this thread. I know where Ursula is well.

Ya know, revising documents is my job and I would love to slap this bad boy on eeeeeeverything.

I want to get a set of those and start guerilla tagging things with them.

you really shouldn't! warning labels are there for a purpose, and using them on things that aren't legitimately dangerous degrades their ability to warn of actually dangerous circumstances.

Aww. *kicks rock* Okay.

That appears to be a laser.

15-watt Argon laser, specifically.

Every single thing you've shown would've had my partner enthralled & pricing a trip just to see it. He absolutely would've stolen that label.

Marvin the Martian wants his illudium q-36 explosive space modulator back, if you find it.

Ooh it’s an infrared laser! Probably with its chiller or power supply. Likely unrelated to the ice cream freezer

If the laser is dead but still has its crystal rod in it, it can be cut into good faceted gemstones. Clear or a pale purple pink eksmaoptics.com/nd-yag-laser...

Do me a favor and hit the Quanta Ray with a sledgehammer. It's for the best.

Are any of these lasers likely to be usable if somebody bought one and tinkered?

You found the place where mad scientists shop.

Considering most people aren't as thorough as me in decommissioning, yes but the longer you leave them out in the open desert air & sun the greater the tinker factor required.

Honestly, how likely am I to trip over something genuinely dangerous/radioactive here? Other than the heirloom weed killer.

Very very low but not zero. A basically functional Geiger–Müller counter is under a hundred bucks these days, and probably justifiable on the basis of Fun rather than safety, if you're going to haunt surplus shops in the Great Southwest. I haven't seen trinitite in a gift shop in yonks, though.

Until you try to turn something on, fairly low. I will not give you any odds after you plug things into the wall.

Ten, fifteen percent.

Thanks to you a number of us recognize the dread words “Quanta Ray.” For those of you who don’t, this is why he has a grudge - it’s an excellent read: www.funraniumlabs.com/2024/07/how-...

this is....so many safety violations from one person

Three, but only Bob's was in the here and now. The other two were dreaming of Violations Of The FUTURE!!!

the severed brake line just...wow

They're excellent lasers for something as old and giant as they are. They are also somehow prone to the most ridiculous misuse.

Am I reading it right, that you didn't get your eyes checked for months?

Didn't notice anything wrong. No bleed, no thermoacoustic blast popping noise on the retina.

But still, what would you have advised anyone else to do? I'm glad there turned out to be only minimal damage.

In the absence of immediate observed injury or suspected exposure, nothing.

Forgive me. I thought you did suspect possible exposure.

You're getting an inkling of why accident investigation is hard.

I refuse to google anything in that entice which comes after “bleed”

Sentence, ugh.

Thermoacoustic blast, in the context of one's retina, is about as fun to read about as degloving incidents. Short version: flash boiling of tissue. Unfortunately, it's what a Quanta Ray is famous for doing to people with direct hits. It's also powerful enough to do it to your skin.

I'm lucky that a diffusely scattered beam was merely powerful enough to "bruise" my peripheral retina. As I said in the post, if I hadn't held a big ass piece of white poster paper in front of me, I wouldn't have even noticed. Ophthalmologist would have at my next visit, mind you.

Great googly moogly! I have only a Bachelors in physics from a university with a laser and optics department. I did do a class in a laser lab. And WTELF. I know scientists/engineers are prone to idiocy in terms of "it'll be fun/cool" but NO ONE involved in these shenanigans had second thoughts?

You see, they were all professionals. Two were very excited about their idea. The other had a firm commitment to customer service/their commission on the sale. The safety person exists to remind you the rest of the world exists.

“Are you declaring war on the United States, Bob?”

He never did answer.

awwww bob 😔

Sounds like something from Buckaroo Banzai…

Two of those things are lasers. Have you ever read Bruce Sterling's Distraction? Because you seem to be living scene from that book.

They're high powered laser systems, just lying about.

I can be trusted with high power laser systems. I promise.

Ooh, Spectra Physics! I delivered stuff there way back when.

I feel like you’ve found a new Fallout location!

So much just random. I would be so worried about stumbling across an orphaned radiation source there..

I'm not convinced she hasn't already.

The kind of place that can only exist Outside in the desert.

Oh that brings back memories. 😆

Actually used an old ammo canister as a lunchbox for years back in my letter carrier days. Switched to something more traditional during the "going postal" years, thinking the ammo can might make people nervous.

You will appreciate this. During the years we lived in our house in Virginia, the local branch post office employee lot had a white van in it with the license DSGRNTL. And no, I never got to meet him or shake his hand.