upahill

Can confirm that the 27:1 gearbox will do full travel on my TS65 in about 5-6 seconds if pushed to. I think it was a fluke moving it that fast though, I actually prefer slower movement as it seems smoother, less vibration etc. What swung the decision for me was the holding torque. Being able to power the motor down and not have any slip, whereas the standard NEMA17s would slip slightly unless powered. This meant that a) less power was being used and b) the motor kept cool which was important for me as was using a 3D printed bracket. Try turning the shaft of the 27:1 by hand and its VERY difficult, whereas without the gearbox its fairly easy. Thats effectively what your imaging gear is trying to do everytime you point up and power down the coils. That being said, my mounting application looked dreadful and will be switching it out for a ZWO EAF soon hopefully The PG27 is heavy and gave me real issues balancing my tiny scope.

Im of the belief that Earth has had planet wide flooding plenty of times, just fairly sure we were not around at the time to witness it. The impact craters on the moon are pretty good indicators of the job its been doing. Perhaps we reciprocate equally but less noticeably due to many burning up in atmosphere.

^ This EQMOD will connect to AstroEQ PHD2 will connect to EQMOD Ascompad i believe is just for controlling mounts with a joypad? Could be wrong on that though.

Congrats on first light! Sounds like you have a great convenient setup there to give you many nights of enjoyment. You never forget your first Saturn viewing!

I used the PG-5 27:1- wanted the extra torque to ensure there wasn't any slip. I could be wrong but I think it gives you more steps in the CFZ too, there were a few motor choices which I had to steer clear of because of this. Worth calculating with your scope as you may need that extra gearing (or tweak your microstepping) It's been a while since I played with it and to be honest was never quite satisfied with how I built mine so will be going for the ZWO option instead

👍 Perspex is great, I use it on the laptop too when im outside etc. The only problem I find is that even with filters the website shown above still produces a lot of brightness coming through the filter than is necessary. I would rather a dark website being shown through a red filter than a bright white one. Indoors I use a 42" screen and two 24" screens, even if I had perspex to cover those it would still be quite bright, this just mutes whats coming through from surfing the web etc so helps a little more and is free.

I pretty much exclusively print PLA and never had issues with it. Now im not printing shelving brackets or caribiners for mountain climbing but a lot of the fears about PLAs stability seem to be theory rather than fact. Im closing in on 18months experiment with a EQ6 pier adapter printed in PLA, mounted outdoors 24/7 with plenty of temp variation, sunlight exposure etc. Not a single problem.

This printer looks interesting, I have a Formlabs but the resin trays are a pain and expensive when they go wrong. Going to get rid of it and get something like this I think, I had been looking at the Anycubic photon but really want something that self levels - first layer adhesion was always an issue. I can just about handle the cleanup of parts although it is not a pleasant job. Invest time in setting up a good quality alchohol wash and alcohol rinse station and save some annoyance each time.

Most of my PC is dark themed, wallpapers, browser themes etc. One thing that bugs me though, especially on the laptop when im outside is if I need to browse the web and web pages come up with huge white space areas. I have the same problem working on the pc at night indoors - the glare can be quite bad. I found by accident the plugin for firefox called Dark Reader. It recolours almost any website to be dark themed much like SGL. Heres the BBC page side by side comparison so you can see what I mean Hopefully it will help others, apologies if its been mentioned before.

ASI1600, Filter Wheel & some gear to hopefully automate the dome. Also the remaining parts for my CNC router. I should be saving for a house, car repairs, retirement, financial freedom and all that boring stuff - but FLO sell shiny things! On the plus side my new PC is built so thats one big project / expense out the way for a few years.

+1 more, I opted for the egg chair cover for additional height, but in reality it was a bit too long - the one Anthonyexmouth posted looks much better. That being said, I would have prefered a 365 cover, I have found some signs of condensation on the inside of the material which I dont like.

Thanks, yours too - love the blue - yeah its the 2060 - with a view to upgrading to the 2080Ti if I ever feel the need to. Im a bit of an AMD fanboy so stuck with them and went for a used Threadripper 1950X - 16 cores / 32 thread, again with a view to upgrading to the 2970WX if I feel the need and the prices come down. 32GB of ram right now which I can push to 256 on this board. I cant believe the prices of hardware at the moment, had to compromise on every component, but should be a nice upgrade from my FX8320 with 16GB and RX480! And was a radical shift from the Dual E5 Xeon system I was planning.

Well it arrived.... ... and despite the seller listing it as the TR4 edition and specifically stating it was for Threadripper, it isn't. It's the normal version for standard AMD/Intel sockets. So have ordered a Cooler Master ML360 TR4 on a next day pre-noon service as a stop gap and now the labourious returns process can begin 😔 I have had an AIO before, the Corsair H50 or H55 I think and didn't rate it so hopefully the CM one will be better.

Hopefully we can make it work, we missed out on the roast last year but the curry and hog roast were fantastic 😋

Will be getting a custom hard line loop eventually but will have to wait as I already went WAY too far over my budget and if I go water I want to do it properly. Will also be resleeving all the cables etc. Air cooler was £50 - Custom water cooling circa £300-£400 with the GPU too 😔 so it was the first of many compromises. Im not a gamer so its a little unnecessary to be honest and will be mainly for aesthetics if I go for it. Hermes are due to deliver within the next 3.5 hours - fingers crossed.

Good luck with the project, being able to leave everything setup makes life soooo much easier. Look forward to seeing how it goes together. RE the roof, have you considered option 3 of a roll away shed? If you have the space for it of course.

Hadn't considered neoprene, but I have about 150mm of travel on the cnc and can always layer up for really deep cuts. The laser has less travel at around 80mm and would suffer from weird kerfing with multiple passes through that depth - neoprene might be tricky to laser as I believe it contains chlorine?? will have to research it a bit more.

Good point, I guess I was trying to mitigate little bits of foam / foam dust - maybe a different treatment or perhaps not required at all with the right foam. The inside of an old OTA I had was flocked and I did see this which made me think of it but spanners are slightly more durable than eyepieces :) This product is called Shadowfoam and looks quite nice, can be laser cut or CNC cut too - the laser would make light work of it if done in layers.

Was sat in the barn trying to find ways to justify finishing my CNC build and got to thinking about a video I watched where someone was carving into a block of foam as a test before running a cut on a final peice of stock material. I have seen the pick and pluck foam for equipment cases but would there be much interest for a bespoke foam carving for equipment boxes? Im going to give it a go as soon as the new motors arrive but could build a stock library of cut outs for standard equipment / eyepieces etc and then cut to size / preferred layout? My CNC is approx 4x4 foot so could cover a large selection of OTAs with custom cut outs for accessories, cables etc. Im going to use this thread to seperate it from my other projects, but the plan is: Start off simple with a case insert to hold some Hyperion eyepieces I have. Practice cutting different foams to test finish. Look into vacuum moulding flock covers for the finished foam inserts. I imagine peli-cases etc would have a standard shape/size to stick to, but the external edges could be cut to fit anything. We did something similar 10 years ago with fibreglass insulation boards and celotex, routing lines in them to enable them to be folded for ducting but I think the fibreglass material we used for that would be too dusty. As would florist foam - any other suggestions?

Just added a food order via FLO for all 3 meals, any idea what time the Sunday roast will run until - possibility of OH having to work the weekend (in Hereford) so may not get back until late afternoon?

Lots of postmen over the past couple of days dropping off parts for a new rig geared more towards astro-processing and 3d modelling. Had to make quite a few compromises to keep the budget less than astronomical though. Managed to get the majority ex-display or second hand though so grabbed a few bargains. Unfortunately Hermes have let the side down again and it has been sat ready to test for 3 days until a CPU fan arrives

Bolts arrived today so got the handle attached, its pretty sturdy - wouldnt want to depend on it for life but the occasional manouvere should be fine. Also got the bolts for the finder shoe so the new guide scope is installed and ready for testing.

Might be worth emailing a mod, I know some camp sites get funny about "non-residents" especially as SGL doesnt have the site exclusively. Other than that how are your ninja skills? 🤣 We thought about driving home each night as only in Monmouth but its a nice excuse to get the caravan out and not have to take it far. You could always pitch a £10 tent and drive home each night.

So the more I look into this, it seems it would be great for controlling mains voltage actuators - but lacks the fidelity I want, since the output from the sensors is nothing more than terminals I feel a arduino nano tucked in the box on the right and a relay control board would give me more control and better integration with software so might not even use the main controller. The expanding bolts in the concrete blocks was a fail, they wont expand fully and grip the block as they just spin (despite using the correct size drill etc.) I now have the PITA job of trying to get them out of the holes. I have a set of Resin anchor bolts arriving in the post tomorrow which I am hoping will do better, they are the type with the hex head on the top to stop them spinning when I tighten down the pier so fingers crossed by tomorrow night the pier will be mounted and some pipe for a cable run will be underneath the deck.

Picked up a bit of a bargain at the carboot today (if it works). As it stands the unit will change four outputs based on windspeed and/or rain. Not sure if I will use the interface box on the left or just just the sensors on the right and try to interface with them in some otherway (maybe even get some data logging going on) I need to do a bit more reading up on how I can use it but thought it was a pretty cool addition to the project. Also managed to score some foam tiles for the obsy so thats the next project in there I think.