JamesF

My daughter did the off-road parts of her compulsory basic training to allow her to ride a moped on the road today.  Trying to get hold of a moped to actually ride however is a bit of a nightmare.  There's apparently such a shortage of supply that even main dealers can't get hold of their own models, and second hand ones have several potential buyers lined up even before they actually come through the door.

James

45 minutes ago, johninderby said:

No shortage of TVs though. 

Yeah, there always seem to be plenty of the things you can do without

James

29 minutes ago, johninderby said:

Biggest problem astro dealers are having at the moment is lack of stock. Must be frustrating to have loads of potential customers and not enough stock.

It appears to be the same for many others, too.  There seems to be a shortage of stock of just about anything that is made, or has components made, in China.

James

My new toy arrived today and I have it assembled and powered up.  I'm generally very impressed with the build quality, I have to say.  Not so much with the assembly instructions

I've gone as far as finding the "home" position, but I've not determined if the "disable stepper" menu option means I can move the motors freely by hand  yet, so I need to do a bit more reading first (and I also need to raise the print head so I can remove the protective plastic sheet from the glass bed.

James

The description I have says:

"A look at unskippable vinyl turntables, the community spirit behind elderflower cordial, some of the planet's best telescopes and the art of making model trains."

James

I imagine they'd not want to hang around too long before stabilising it.  A freak gust of wind could do a lot of damage, I'd have thought.  I'd love to hang around and watch what happens next, but I need some sleep

James

21 minutes ago, Alien 13 said:

You would think that after 80 years of launches they could now just hit a big red button and go

I think with the Space-X machines, the computers on the rocket actually have the big red button

James

Yeah, I'm thinking it's not looking too hopeful.

James

7 minutes ago, Mognet said:

Everything going at once sounds like a motherboard or control board issue. They should be fairly easy to replace

I'm thinking so, but if I'm going to replace it then I'll probably look at upgrading it to add a fan for the print head and so on, at which point it's become a larger, more time-consuming project and I want to get back to printing things :)

James

Resurrecting this thread, today my first 3d printer appears to have died.

I managed one print this morning, but during a second the printer just stopped for a few seconds and then restarted, by which time it had become confused about where the print head was and rammed most of the motors against the stops before I could hit the button to stop.  It stopped permanently during another try.  I powercycled everything and it looked like it was all ok again at first, but neither the bed nor print head would come up to temperature and the fans won't run at full speed.  The LCD display stopped working quite some time back, so I've decided to replace it.

Tempting as the CR10 is, I'm not sure I want to spend that much and I don't really have the need for the larger print bed for the time being, so I've gone for the Ender 3 V2.

Not sure what might be wrong with the existing printer at the moment.  When I have time I'll tinker with it and see if it can be brought back to life.

James

There was a school in Taunton (now closed, I believe) that had a very large dish in the grounds and I had thought about doing this sort of thing myself.  The dish appears to be gone now though.  Perhaps just as well, as I don't believe the WAF (wife acceptance factor) would be very high at all.  Not unless it got decent television reception as well, anyway.

James

Looks like Olly and some of our Spanish SGLers could end up with a souvenir or two though.

James

I suspect that if you're doing AP and the lack of independence between the alt and az axes is any kind of a worry then you're using the wrong polar alignment tool :)   Of course ASIAir may not give you much choice, which would be unfortunate.

I further suspect that the engineering standards used for the manufacture of many Skywatcher mounts in no way guarantee that levelling the tripod will actually mean the alt and az axes are in fact genuinely parallel/perpendicular to the top face of the tripod once the mount is in position.

So it may be that fairly close is the best you can do with any spirit level unless you have access to moderately decent engineering kit.

James

Ah, yes, that does indeed appear to be the case.

James

I thought there was an ASCOM driver for Mallincam cameras.  Assuming I'm correct, it would work with that, wouldn't it?

James

Just saw this on the news myself.  A sad day.

James

56 minutes ago, johninderby said:

What no Mega 🤔😁

BTW did anyone notice today is National Superhero Day. 🙄

You mean you haven't been wearing your pants outside your trousers all day?!

James

3 minutes ago, Paul M said:

I'm thinking of starting a business selling Full Moons to large corporations.

So next month we could have McDonald's "Mega Meal" Moon. June could have Coca Cola's "It's The Real Thing" Moon.

I'm looking at tying up with my mate Elon, see if we can't project some logo's on the Moon's surface.

My business is still in the planning stage, but watch this space...

Projecting the logos is just too hard.  He could just move some of the brazilians of satellites he's got to make the relevant images in front of the Moon.

James

29 minutes ago, teoria_del_big_bang said:

I was worried then I noticed that it was Euros and not GBP so actually under £54,000 so means I can afford the bigger NB filters as well - I Wish 🙂 

Or you could build a triple rig...

James

On 24/04/2021 at 17:04, vlaiv said:

I expected TS cameras to be rebrand of one of known CMOS camera manufacturers (QHY, ZWO or Altair - although I suspect that Altair Astro also order their cameras from China and have them branded).

Altair's cameras are rebranded Touptek models, similar to Omegon, Risingcam and Orion (at least the Starshoot G models, I believe).  I think (some) Opticstar and Levenhuk cameras may be as well.

James

2 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

When I researched DIY motor focuser - recommendation was to put it on fine focusing shaft due to precision needed. One of comments in the thread that I linked to - also pointed that out.

However, ZWO EAF has rather decent resolution - of 5760 steps. Even if one revolution of coarse knob is 10mm of focuser travel - that is still 1.7µm per step. More than enough (critical focus zone is in tens of µm for fast systems).

Aha.  Consider me less confused than I was before

James

If the grub screw is cross threaded (and I think that's the most likely state of affairs now), it may well be pretty much impossible to move, hence the stripped head.  Drilling it out may be the only solution to remove it.

However, if you fit the EAF to the coarse side then you could just drill another hole for access to tighten the coupler and ignore the grub screw.  Unless of course it fouls the coupler, in which case it will probably need to be removed or ground off anyhow.

James

4 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

Third - it is recommended for it to go on fine focusing shaft.

I'm confused   The instructions appear to say to fit it to the coarse side.

James

Just now, oymd said:

Sorry, what does that mean?

What I have noticed is that the protruding part of the screw looks TILTED to one side, and not pointing straight at the centre of the circle as it should do

It means basically what you've said.  The threads of the screw and the hole are not aligned, so the screw goes in at an angle and the threads cross each other rather than interlocking.

James

1 minute ago, oymd said:

But how would I fix the EAF to this side? The focus arm  (what ever the brass coloured arm is called) is recessed in the focus housing? How will I fix the EAF to the arm?

Well, if you have a coupler to join the two shafts, with the grub screw removed you could line the grub screw in the coupler up with the hole and put an allen key through the hole to tighten it (or even drill another hole).  I'm guessing though, I'm afraid.  I'm not familiar with the ZWO EAF.

James