I spent a good portion of the day just cleaning up the shop and restoring it to its former (mostly) organized glory!
The small manual bandsaw has been out of commission for a few weeks now due to a worn-out belt on the lower wheel, so we've had to use the larger, self-feeding one to cut all the raw stock. I spent a frustrating hour cleaning the wheel from the old rubber and plastic bonder that sealed the belt to the metal frame. Getting the new belt on proved to be much easier of a task, and after letting it sit in a bath of hot water for a few minutes, I was able to get it on and set the bandsaw back up again!
Unfortunately, the little guard plate that goes around the blade was lost years ago, so my boss used a make-shift plate of acrylic with a slice to the center of it to prevent anything from falling and getting caught in the blade. I was given the task of making a new guard plate out of some scrap aluminum stock, so after a few quick measurements, I came up with a simple design in Fusion360!
I'm actually quite pleased with how little time it took to design, program, set up the machine, and run the part! All in all, there were maybe twenty-two minutes of work before the piece was complete. I only needed to do a single operation, so once it was finished, I flipped it over and surfaced the top until I got my desired thickness! The fit was a little snug, so I filed the edges a bit to get it to sit better.