Stub Mandrel

I seem to have had my best results with PrimaValue PLA, which is a mid-price filament, about £20-25 a reel.

Interetsing Rigid ink 1kg ASA - off their website a steep £42.95, from them via eBay a mind boggling - £57.99!

The old slogan of the Advertising Standards Authority - ASA Rigid Ink say same print temperature as ABS: https://rigid.ink/blogs/news/175845063-the-difference-between-abs-and-asa

But is it legal, decent, honest and truthful?

My lappy was encased in ice except the screen on the 8th!

LOL that 'warp' looks like good design! You cshoudldn't have told us. If I have a view like that, I'd clean the window

AARGH! I've had so many bulky prints fail that way in big or small ways I now use a brim and remove it with a deburring tool. Virtually guarantees adhesion

See the pic in the photo above, there's a flat on the tube which doesn't run to the end, providing a stop. I glued a small thin stop on the bottom of the flat to limit the travel (too much as now I can't achieve focus with a fully inserted EP ).

A 'Tommy Walsh' junior hacksaw from the pound shop will sort it; wrap a ring of insulation tape to make sure the cut is straight.

I completely missed that

Too good for a StuPod! Disqualify him! Hound him out!

You seem to have four dark segments for each bright star. Faint ones at 1, 5 and 9 o'clock and a strong one at 3 o'clock. My modded 130P-DS hstill shows some of these segments (see below) which I assume are caused by the mirror retention clips? So my guess is that doing the mod on your scope will remove the darkest segment at 3 o'clock, but not the three fainter ones.

The problem is usually me trying to pull filament out when it isn't hot enough...

Careful! just be aware that the maximum amount you can remove is determined by the requirement for the lower bearings to have some tube to bear on I think it would be possible to file a 'scoop' in the end to follow the tube radius. Don't forget to black the cut end of the tube so it doesn't scatter light from a bright off-axis star.

Took apart my anemometer, after two half-hour sessions in an ultrasonic cleaning tank with metal cleaning fluid to free up the two parts. Grim! It was quite nicely made with a circular PCB and a hall-effect sensor standing on its legs, the magnet seems to have dropped off and disappeared under the brutal force needed to free everything up. One ball race is solid, the other grittier than Rooster Cogburn... It would be nice to salvage it and fit a new anemometer cup assembly, 3D printed with a better 'skirt' to protect the bearings from rain - and taper the end so any dew rolls away from the bearing. I opened up the 'control box' - covered in algae and several moss colonies. inside a few connectors, an orphaned humidity sensor, a nasty spider and a hibernating (or dead) harlequin ladybird... So... my advice to you is think about moisture and insect ingress, and plan on a strip down for maintenance every year or three!

Inner end, then I stuck a bit of circuit board on the flat to stop it winding out too far.

Sorry I meant the finned 'heat break' tube between hotend and extruder - it looks a bit more expensive than the Mk8 ones, and I've got through a few (breaking filament in them). Very clever design that piezo thing though, I assume it gently 'taps' the build plate with the nozzle?.

I cut about 1/2" off mine.

Do you have to replace the whole heatsink at intervals?

You have indeed - I even entered!

I hope the equipment used is given consideration as well as the final result. In future, I think it is important that ALL challenges make it very explicit what their target audience is in the title. I would like to see ones chosen specifically intended to be for beginners, or at least thought out to provide a level playing field. One example might be limiting sub length and/or aperture ratio. I think a competition for compact/bridge/phone cameras might even tempt some of the visual astronomers to the dark side or encourage those of use getting a bit more experience to slim things down a bit. Are you thinking what I'm thinking? It's time for common sense. The challenge of our times is to encourage more participants, so perhaps the next moves forward need to go back to basics so all you need is a strong and stable tripod.

CPC are sel;ling a 'does everything' Oregon Scientific set for £120 ... but where's the fun in that?

Which means I probably have a magnet and reed switch inside the anemometer, which was my hunch. Hmm that file has a modified date of April 2008. It is about time I finished the project...

I found a clue: Wind Direction Indicator Gray Code -ve Black +ve (switched) Brown D0 White D1 Yellow D2 Blue D3 Orange Temperature Resistance -ve D0 Light Resistance -ve D0 Rain Pulse -ve +ve D0 Wind Speed Pulse -ve +ve D0 Pressure Voltage On board Battery Voltage -ve +ve Charger Voltage -ve +ve Humidity (future expansion) TBC -ve +ve D0

So will I!