MIT Lincoln Lab 300 GHz Radar Dish Structure

Air Force wanted to retrofit the old MIT Millstone steel pedestal/bearing with a new 150-foot aluminum radar dish at sub-quarter-inch tolerances. No shop would bid; ex-Electric Boat welding company eventually took the contract and succeeded. Used to illustrate (1) the scarcity of qualified aluminum welders in New England and (2) the use of many fillet welds and gussets rather than groove welds in precision aluminum structures.

Student: Tom, were you the one saying you had to have qualified aluminum welders?

It's harder to find qualified aluminum welders. I was doing something for MIT Lincoln Lab. The Air Force wanted to take the old MIT Millstone radar — MIT has this little peak out in Millis, Massachusetts, just north of Boston. They had built this radar antenna back in the 50s for research purposes for the MIT physics department. That type of physics went away or got exhausted, so they had this big steel bearing that could hold this thing, and they were trying to find some application for it.