Gina

I like the "old wireless tuner style" reducer.

Progressing nicely.

It's certainly cheap compared with mine!

I get that too, with my expensive setup! (That's if it is the same thing.) I have no idea why. Strange and annoying.

Yep - I have Cat 6 cable from house to observatory. Runs at gigabit speed.

Good luck with the weather. It's stopped raining here but there's more heavy rain forecast. A yellow alert!

Belated Happy Birthday Doug. 😀

Happy Birthday 😀 Nice presents...

I'm starting this Blog as I have decided to resurrect my Giant 3D Printer project sometime in the relatively near future. From building other printers I have gained extra knowledge and may have a plan. This will be based on both the Mk.2 and Mk.3 Giant printer designs plus my Concorde 3D Printer for the Z drive system. The main casing has yet to be decided. The print bed will be moving to provide the Z axis, having thought long and hard about a moving XY frame as in the Mk.2 and rejected it. The Z drive will move the print bed as in Concorde printer with trapezoidal form threaded rods and C-Beam Linear Rail – Cut To Size with C-Beam Double Gantry Plates.

I have implemented this method of Z drive using C-Beam Double Gantry Plates. With the overall height of the drive (except for motor) being just under 500mm the Z range is 300mm. With the heating problems with the 400mm square print area I have decided to abandon this size of print bed and go for the 300mm x 300mm as used in the previous Titan printer. In view of this and the inaccurate plywood panels currently used in the box and having found a source of cut-to-size hardwood plywood, I have decided to make a new box slightly smaller in footprint but slightly higher. As a result of all this the build volume will be around 300mm cube (just under 1ft cube).

Improved the Z axis by replacing the gear drive with timing belt and pulleys.

I use 16.5A low voltage cable.

I won't have mains in a damp or wring wet with dew scope room.

Yep - that's what I do. Connections go from the battery to a switch and fuse box (with digital current display) then on to the pier head. I use an ordinary car battery 45AH - you might prefer a more beefy battery depending on load and how long you want to run during a power cut. I run two +12v (13.8v) lines to the pier - one for the mount and the other for the imaging rig. A household heavy duty earth bonding cable runs from an earth rod outside the observatory to a connection/groundpoint at the mount and then on to the switch/fuse box where it connects to battery negative terminal. Proper fusing is essential as the battery is capable of supplying several hundred amps and will fry most cables given the chance.

That is exactly what I have.

This printer is not quite good enough for some precision parts I'm trying to print so I'm looking into possible improvements again.

Colorfabb 3D printer filament bought in their spring sale.

I'm finding that my printers (actually just printer ATM as I only have one working) are not accurate enough for the parts I now want to print. In particular the escape wheel for a pendulum clock. So I need either to improve my Mini printer or build a new one. I think the weakest link is the V-Slot rail system. I should add that I'm looking for an accuracy of 0.1mm or better. Anyone tried these :- MGN12H Mini Linear Rail Guide, 250/ 300/ 400/ 500/ 550mm Linear Sliding Gide with MGN12H Carriage Block for DIY 3D Printer and CNC Machine Are they much better than the standard linear rail systems? I know ball bearings running on polished SS round rods works well but involves a lot of construction work.

Have the clock running after a fashion but it's irregular and doesn't keep going for very long. A new escape wheel, anchor and adjustable escapement have helped but I still don't think the escape wheel is accurate enough.

Going train and escapement. The moving end of the adjustable suspension lever will have an M6 threaded rod, bearing and thumb wheel to adjust the height.

Designed a lever system to adjust the height of the anchor so that I can set the separation of anchor from escape wheel. I've replaced the original round arbour on the anchor with a square section to avoid the movement I was getting before. This was intended to allow for getting the clock "in beat" but it was too coarse and also tended to move in use. I'll think about that adjustment later. One possibility is bending the crutch as is often done with pendulum clocks to get them "in beat". With printed plastic this involves heat to soften the plastic. Alternatively I could replace the plastic with solid wire. Here are screenshot of the CAD models. Adjustable suspension, anchor and crutch.

The limit switches look like ordinary microswitches which are cheap enough to buy anyway. OTOH you might as well use those if alright.

Very interesting. It looks like the secondary end connection to the bars is within the view of the main mirror but I presume this is an optical illusion. The primary printed support looks pretty big - will this fit on a 300mm x 300mm print bed or does it need bigger?

Made up a new pendulum with 12mm hardwood dowelling, 3D printed coupling to the suspension spring and a new 3D printed bob. This should help but there are two adjustments which could do with making variable - the spacing of the anchor from the escape wheel and to get the escapement "in beat" without tilting the whole clock. (In beat means getting the "tick-tock" equally timed.)

Clock mechanism in case. The pendulum rod is a steel rod from an ancient wall clock but seems to be too flexible. I may try a dowel rod instead though the air friction will be much higher.