upahill

Swept up and got the pier in place to get a feel for it. Its probably a little high but only having a tiny frac on it for now so im actually pretty happy as it means I should be able to see over the base ring easily and capture the low southern sky if needed. Next job, drilling holes My love for alexa has returned so will be installing a wireless repeater, echo dot and RGB bulb in that light fitting, so "Alexa, observatory lights to 10%" should give me a nice dim red glow when needed. I can also switch them off from indoors if I forget. Ill tie this into the rest of the automation when its ready and maybe even write some custom skills for opening dome roof and positioning. I am also toying with the idea of painting the inside of the dome a darker colour - is this a good or bad idea? I feel like it might make sense. The peg in the pier adapter is going to need a new hole drilled and tapped too Its about 45 degrees out as it is

That took too long but almost at the finish line (pier wise) Dug the hole as deep as I could before hitting stone and ended up shovelling out with a cup. First row of blocks held in with concrete and today have added two more courses of blocks + a slab. Hopefully the mortar is going to set properly and not turn to dust like the last time I tried laying bricks :D Current plan is to drill the four holes for the pier and drop in some anchor bolts. Need to figure out how they work but should be straightforward. Bolts should go through the slab and grip into the block. The slab is levelish <2-3 degrees either way. Ill tidy around the edge with some foam and fill the gap with deck boards - then centralise the dome around the pier before bolting that down. Excuse the mess. It's not the largest pier but its ~300kg all in on stone boulders so should be fairly stable.

This was the clip from the feed I watched, the youtube channel livestreams from South Padre 24/7! Gives a better sense of scale than the spacex feed.

Was great to watch! Especially after the scrub at T+.8 the day before. I don't know why but somehow the Starhopper launch felt even more exciting than a full scale launch - I think its the fact that it was quite raw, I had been watching a live feed from a few km away and seeing cranes moving around, bits getting taken off and put back together really drove home how experimental and unknown alot of this tech still is.

Congrats on the new career! Im just up the road in Monmouth so also interested in any replies as would be good to find out whats going on near here. SGL Star Party is only about an hour away in Hereford, and I think there is AstroCamp too in Cwmdu, Brecon Beacons twice a year but I haven't been to that one yet so can't comment much. Should be able to find it on Facebook though.

Yep, its usually at that point that I realise I havent got heating oil 😆

Its been horrific today, I was dripping wet in B&Q lugging the blocks around the store, almost got to the car and realised they had charged me for 12 rolls of turf at 4x the price, so lugged them all back again. They are staying in the car until later tonight I think

Spent a couple of hours digging out in this mad heat - only about 12" down so far, having to break away at stones to clear them out with a shovel. I wont be going much deeper. I picked up 12 breeze blocks today, im just reluctant to hand mix 20 bags of concrete - these are a little easier to handle My pier base method seems to change every time I go in there. This has less mechanical connection to the mass, but I think it will be ok for my needs. I should be able to get 12" below ground, the other layers will take it up to the deck, so in theory the slab will be the only thing protruding into the obsy itself. Ill M10 bolt the pier to the slab and chemically fix it to the slab, then set the whole slab and pier into a mortar bed for final levelling.

Hi Steve, Was our first year last year, at any star party, everyone was very gentle with us 😄 Weather wasn't great for stargazing but I highly recommend turning up for the quiz (hopefully the bar will in the tent again too ) There were some great talks too, learnt quite a bit over the few days. You will have a great time and the camp site is great. I am a bit of a social introvert myself and found it all very relaxed and welcoming. The curry and hog roast were pretty good too, so worth getting tickets for that if you havent already. 👍

Works of art and a great display of your craftmanship. Im sure they will be treasured by their owners.

If its on the sensor then a spot in the bottom left will always be in the bottom left, regardless of how you rotate the camera in the scope as this will just rotate the image in the frame..... I think, im doubting myself now too. Removing them in processing may be your only option if you cannot get to the sensor for cleaning. I was painstakingly trying to remove all dust from my gear last year, then I just resigned to the idea of taking calibration frames and forgetting about it - short of being in a clean room lab I dont think its even possible to keep gear dust free.

Colab with @Gina on the giant printer? Look forward to seeing it when you do will be impressive.

Once enabled in the firmware, a simpe microswitch wired to any spare input should be usable - you can configure what you wired it too in the firmware. Theres a basic summary here of someone doing similar to a Tevo - i actually have some spare switches and should probably do this myself too, M412 S1 enables runout detection. Not sure how to configure the routine so it does smart stuff like disabling heat / beeping etc - need to look into it a little more. Yeah marlin has been alpha with 2.0 for at least 2-3 years now I have been torn between the RAMBo Einsy with Marlin and the Duet for my next controller for a while - duet will probably win out in the end as tinkering with Marlin does my head in and the web interface on the Duet really appeals to me as it wont need Octoprint in the middle.

Do you know which board your clone runs on, there are probably ready to print/wire solutions on thingiverse but will likely require a marlin recompile whatever way you go.

@Carbon Brush retrofitting a Duet might provide you with more control, keep the mechanics of the Makerbot but just swap out the brains. Something worth considering perhaps when the disadvantages outweigh the advantages.

Are the makerbots still closed source, I know some of the mainboards available now have better input control for things like filament detection.

Amazing thread and models, I just started this print and am overwhelmed by the effort you have gone through!

This is the style I couldnt get on with.... had them on the CTC printers The TEVO printers ship with a V6 clone, but as you can see from this diagram the teflon inserts still melt and clog.

A perhaps worthy mention alongside the filament choice is the extruder choice. I had no end of problems with clogging, breaks, melted teflon etc on both the CTC Dual (MK8) and the Black Widow - eventually, reluctantly, sprung for a genuine E3D Hotend and just like that every filament/extruder problem solved. Hands down the best mod I have done. I only use 0.4 nozzles really, but switching to the all metal type has made life so much easier now and havent had a clog since I got it. Very true. Couldnt get on with Rigid.ink myself, but Gina rates it well as do many many others. I have had expensive filaments give me grief and now use mostly Sunlu or Surreal brand cheap stuff. None of my stuff is mission critical or for resale though, so I can cope with the occasional failure/defect. One thing I would like to do is make the move to larger rolls of 3mm stuff - if I could find a factory willing to put some 10kg rolls in our next container it would be a bargain for sure!

I love the idea of printable supports - and will get round to it one day, but I spend long enough faffing with one extruder Maybe if I was doing it on a daily basis it would be worthwhile, but for now im happy with designing for not needing support and using the single extruder. I did have the CTC Bizer Dual but the second head became used as spares for the first

All this talk kind of makes me want to go and get my Formlabs printer up and running..... or sell it - havent decided which will be the least hassle yet.

Makes sense. Stuff you might need: Filament, more filament, oh and filament. Calipers are handy too for calibration, cheap plastic ones are fine. Tom Sanladerer has a 3 hour video where he unboxes, builds and configures an Ender 3 - may be worth watching / skipping through to get an idea of how its put together, etc.

The Prusa are pretty much the "gold standard" for home 3d printers, a lot of innovation from Josef and his team that usually finds it way into the clones shortly after. Good prices, I use amazon as the returns are super simple so just looked there first but yeah anywhere from £160-£200 is about right for the Ender 3 - some are clones (usually branded as Hictop) so worth watching out for those. Some come with the BL Touch option for bed leveling but its not something I use, some people swear by it, others cant stand it - im old school and level up by eye / with a set of feeler guages. The prusa printers use a much more complex and reliable self levelling system. Filament is the same, some swear by £30+ rolls of filament, I use whatever is the cheapest grey I can get (£9-11 a roll) and yeah I get a few failures but generally my stuff comes out ok if the machine is calibrated for the filament.

If your budget is flexible, and you want less headaches with features like self-leveling etc, or if you are prepred to go second hand then you cant go wrong with a Prusa either: https://shop.prusa3d.com/en/3d-printers/180-original-prusa-i3-mk3-kit.html Cheaper clones of the prusa are also available.

On my black widow I still get failed prints - its almost always down to the bed level, cheap or old filament or poor model design. As you go you start finding things to improve on the machines which help with all the little problems. Dont think there are any perfect printers yet Good thing about printers such as the Enders are the popularity, check out thingiverse.com and type in ender 3 and you will see all the improvement, mods and fixes you can do if you choose / need to.