I've spent most of this week out of the office. Since the aluminum plate arrived from Lusk on Tuesday, I've spent most of my time in the machine shop, laying out hole locations, drilling holes, and deburring edges. The 12 fill in plates are done, and now I'm working on the submerged plate itself. That is proving to be much tougher than I originally anticipated. I'm planning on spending the rest of today using a portable electromagnetic drill press to get through the A36 steel that a standard hand drill just can't handle. If all goes according to plan, the plate will be ready for testing in the test tank by the end of next week. Remaining tasks to complete before testing include: creating a new bridal for the plate (since our last one snapped), moving all the testing equipment (HPU, accumulator, manifold, valve, and hydraulic ram) to the test tank room, making a new mounting bracket for the string pot so we can measure the linear position of the hydraulic ram, and creating some bumpers for the corners of the submerged plate to protect the inner wall of the test tank.