I decided that today would be the day to install the vent cover to vent outside of the garage. This will let me use the laser with the garage door closed, and also I was able to get the blower off of the top of the laser.

And bonus, I no longer need to take the exhaust hose off of the laser when I start work, and more importantly, at the end of the day, when I am likely tired, I don't have to bend over to pick up the hose so that I can close the garage.

Though on that last point, it appears that the hose fell off of the laser yesterday, but didn't trigger the garage door sensor and the door happily closed on the hose.

Whoops. But everthing is happily together.

Then for bonus I attacked the issue that the cover of the lid had warped a bit and come off of the frame.

I didn't quite mean to take the whole assembly apart, but we often don't intend what ultimately happens!

I thought I could loosen the pieces that hold the cover in place and just slide it a tiny bit to provide more material for the clamp piece to hold onto.

But the project expanded a bit. And then I had a three or four handed job. I got sweetie to help, and we screwed enough screws in to hold things in place.

Then I discovered that some of the screws were short, and perhaps worked if put in the same positions, but that didn't happen.

So I rummaged for longer screws and quickly discovered that these are metric.

Fortunately I had bought a set of metric nuts and screws, and like the vent, everything went together.

And for extra bonus fun, one of the hinge pins on the door was missing. The other day I found a very very long nail that used to hold our gutters in place. We removed the gutters when we had the house painted, because they were ugly and in bad shape. We have not missed them.

But that very very long nail works perfectly as a hinge pin. It sticks out a bit, but it pulls the room together.