Stub Mandrel

3 hours ago, Fieldsy said:

How do you have your scopes rotated so the camera sits on top ,hangs on the side,or hangs underneath?

Thanks

on the side to get the C of G as close to the mount as possible.

Wow! This is so cool. I found the stepper drivers - attached to the correct geared steppers!

I wired up except I reversed the connection order to allow a compact configuration (I figured this might reverse stepper rotation at worst):

Connected it all, and lo and behold it works!

I love the rippling LEDs, but might cause upset on a dark site, so I'll put it inside a white PLA case to mute the effect.

All so easy to do that the only challenging bit is just making a case (and adding a switch)!

Phew, I've just got Sharpcap on my desktop thinking it's talking to an AAF2.

My Arduino Nano hasn't got any hardware attached, but that seems to be a minor issue...

What I've found really disturbing is that the Arduino IDE happily announces errors when trying to program the Nano but gives no indication of success, no progress bar (after compilation), no messages, nothing! Completely unlike using the AVR development tools and programmers...

Now I've discovered it's for monopolar steppers ... well I have loads of monopolar steppers of all sizes, including the tiny geared ones (hooray!)

But it could take months to track down the little driver boards... (BOO!!!)

I may even find a bluetooth serial adaptor while I'm searching (hooray!)

Thanks to @tekkydave for all the effort put into this and particularly the meaningful comments!

See:

On 27/05/2020 at 17:06, vlaiv said:

Second thing would be - ability to print with Pet-g.

My i3 clone happily prints PETG, but honestly I prefer PLA for my astro parts as it is strong enough and it makes life easy.

I'm grateful for all the positive feedback on this image, but I wasn't happy with the star shapes, the middle sized stars had a sort of 'point' underneath. I ruthlessly went through all the subs, removing a few where the dec had jumped giving stretched or slightly doubled stars, and re-stacked the best of the RGB together as a Lum layer. I also notoiced the original didn't use sigma stacking so at least one satellite trail was visible. It was challenging as removing too many subs lost the faint outer stars which make this image special. getting it right was tough but kept these stars and got rid of some noise but mostly improved star shapes, especially on the medium sized stars. I also slightly increased the saturation on the yellow stars to make them less biege. For some reason, this data don't blow out as easily either, so I didn't need to play with the core or bright stars yet it looks a bit sparklier.

So, I think Version 2 is a tad better again:

They broke the mike then Doug cut his head on the way through!

On 27/05/2020 at 14:11, Pixies said:

Start of a collection.

I have the 18mm, it's lovely, even with my poor ability to see differences in quality I can see how good it is.

That said, seeing two boosters land side by side is pretty amazing 🙂

15 minutes ago, maw lod qan said:

Well, l cant remember anyone bringing their booster back and reusing it again and again.

True, but in principle it isn't hugely dfferent from landing a probe on Mars or the Moon - crosswinds being the biggest difference.

4 hours ago, Ricochet said:

I think I might have seen it. Mag 2.5 sounds about right for the object I saw, which was a satellite like object, following the same path as the ISS, which didn't match up to anything on Orbittrack. The problem (aside from the relative faintness) was that it was something like 12 or 13 minutes behind the ISS. I was expecting it to be a bit closer and was just about to head back inside when I noticed it moving across the sky.

Sounds right. I was expecting it to be faint and to be up to 20 minutes behind the ISS.

I think it might have been a bit too low down to be visible from the Midlands

I read it could be 20 mins later, but no sign. Only saw ISS. It's the small dot, not the moon...

17 minutes ago, Paul M said:

Anyway, Bob and Doug. Not exactly inspiring names!

I once attended a course presented by a "Blaise Hudson", now that is a name for a Hollywood astronaut!

I'm pleased they look about the same age as me 🙂

The cabin is very slick, straight out of sci-fi (no doubt to keep Elon's vanity rating peaking). Lots of extra space, I think it can take several people.

Caught nearly all fo last night's ISS pass by accident when I went out to wire the mount and scope to my laptop!

Don't forget you can adjust the tilt of the 130P-DS focuser tube

I didn't spot the ISS either, hazy cloud and not quite dark enough

Scrubbed.

Looking a bit shakey with the weather now...

It's raining in Florida!

1 hour ago, Paul Gerlach said:

Why not go for a Sidewinder X1?

Not one I've come across. This review is framed quite positively but suggests a wobbly vertical axis is an issue and there may be some compatibility issues with Cura.

That said it's got some nice features like a mains heated bed and volcano-type extruder.

That's the second pass, quite a bit further south so less visible.

8 minutes ago, Davey-T said:

According to CO and HA ISS isn't visible until the next orbit, is that because it's still daylight ?

Dave

I think they cut off near sunset.

I expect so. Stellarium has it overhead at 20:22 UTC (21:22 BST) and visible, just 8 minutes after sunset here.

At mag -3.3 its 0.7 of a magnitude less bright than Venus but MUCH further away from the sun.

May be tricky to spot but will be visible.

Of course they should both be visible on the later pass.

People seem to think highly of the creality kits but reviews suggest some software hiccoughs.

I'll be watching on my laptop in the garden.

Why?

The ISS goes over at 9:30 followed by the Falcon at 9:45

Rats.

Complete my Mk2 bearing block, the unpowered one with a 'top hat' roller. Offered it up - and realised it needs to be angled sideways by ten degrees.

Now printing a 'tilted' version.

The roller and the other combined roller/pulley have a shaped hole to suit a pin of 8mm precision bar with a flat milled on it. This lets them run in two skateboard bearings and means they can be assembled/disassembled in place if required by just lifting the pin (and unmilled section stops the pin dropping right through).