Mognet

PLA does degrade, but not easily. There's a bit about it on Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polylactic_acid (I'll add that chemistry is not my strong point, so I don't understand much of it) Angus of Maker's Muse has a more practical demonstration https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqNfa_zExRU

I have seen some a couple of things about mechanical strength of PLA prints, but I can't remember where now

From the YouTube reviews I've seen, it looks like the Ender 3 is not just a good and inexpensive starter machine, it will be good for the average user for a number of years

I went for the larger print size of the Creality CR-10 instead of the Ender 3. Assembly isn't difficult and is quoted as being around ten minutes. As one of my cats decided she wanted to "help", it was a lot longer for me! I watched a YouTube video as an assembly guide, which gave some setup and adjustment information that the supplied booklet didn't.

This is the first print, at 0.20mm and without changing any other settings. I had a little issue with adhesion on the glass bed to start with, but solved it with a light covering from a glue stick

10 minutes ago, Stub Mandrel said:

Expensive mug-warmer... 🙂

A mere £325! But as an added extra, it can fit mugs up to 300x300x400mm in size. Whether the bed can take that weight is a different matter

My giving up smoking present to myself, a Creality CR-10S. Just trying to get a successful first print out of it now

For observing, and really cold weather, I've been wearing thermal combats with thermal tights on underneath. They did quite well in Iceland a couple of years ago. They're just pull on and go, and have plenty of pockets.

Most of my family are bikers, and several of them wear the protective padded jeans instead of leathers. They look like regular jeans but a bit thicker. I don't know if they have insulating properties, but might be worth investigating too

I skipped to the last twenty minutes. The gas mask and gloves combined with the mention of smells have put me off resin printing. Seems like there is a lot of extra work, so maybe good for specialist things, and with a tailored environment

I don't tend to worry too much as there will be other clear nights. It's not like the sky is going to vanish any time soon

The 200P is a good choice. I usually use that instead of my mak127 for back garden observing as it's quick to set up and gives good views

I didn't think the waterbutt stand booster would be high enough for me, so I pushed the limits of my DIY skills and came up with a folding stand

I think the About page says it all for the scientific reliability of that site! http://www.scienceinfo.news/about/

Thanks for the video. Seems that there's flat, and there's really flat! Some of this makes the surface table I worked with in QA years ago look really bumpy

I've been seeing this effect since I was young, starting with a photo used to illustrate an article on making plaster-of-paris lunar craters. No matter how I looked at it, the craters always looked like mounds unless I rotated the image.

I think it's all down to lighting angles and expected perceptions. We generally expect things to be lit from above, so for a crater the higher wall would be in shadow and the lower would be lit. When presented with an image that's lit from below the confusion starts because the shadow is now on the lower edge

A quick search has yielded just one user it seems https://stargazerslounge.com/search/?q=d3500

There are a few users of the Nikon D3x00 series on here, including myself, but it's not a range that's popular for AP

3 hours ago, tomato said:

I never thought I would get good retirement advice from SGL, but there you go!

I retire on the 3rd July, I won’t be bored to start with as there is a house move then an observatory to build, 12 months down the line is when I will need to take your sound advice on board.

That gives you plenty of time to plan extra activities then

A former collegue gave me similar advice for retirement; to always have a plan, as he'd seen to many friends and former collegues retire without one and they would just end up stagnating and dying a year or so later. When I last saw him a year before he died he still seemed fairly happy, healthy and fit, was still cycling in to town for his shopping, and at the age of 81 didn't look much different to when he retired at 64

Which end of Essex is good for you? Once you get north of the Colchester/Braintree/Bishop Stortford corridor it turns into small towns and little villages. I used to live on the Suffolk/Essex border which has some decent skies, but I've been out of the area a bit too long to be able to recommend any good/safe spots. Driving is pretty much essential though, as there is little in the way of late running public transport there

I do mine with a 35mm prime on a Nikon, usually tripod based too or occasionally a powered alt-az mount. Haven't posted many of them on here, but there are several in the constellation challenge thread that geordie85 mentioned

https://stargazerslounge.com/forum/278-imaging-challenge-20-constellations-now-closed/

Caught the pass here just after midnight, only naked eye though. Surprised they were so high, and I caught them coming from Ursa Major heading through Cygnus. Those at the back are definitely separating out now

Astroboot have several handsets for sale at the moment, including a V4

33 minutes ago, JamesF said:

I assumed that to be the case, though in this particular example I'd not be surprised if the architect had decided to ping people up to the top floor on a length of elastic.

James

Lengths of elastic are probably an optional extra ?

10 hours ago, Geoff Barnes said:

I'll add a third;

3. Both staircases are dead ends, they don't go anywhere. ?

I suspect the staircase is a spiral round the inside of the building. Otherwise there's no way to get to the scope.

Can't see any way of getting into the dome though, or to get the scope up to that level

The tyre profile looked rather flat to me. That might explain why the bike was a bit wobbly even on gentle corners

Looks like @Ginahas competition for the Concorde printer. The BigRep One is an FFF/FDM printer with a build volume of a cubic metre. No mention of pricing.

Motorbike printing is optional though! https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/technology-46894072/nera-the-3d-printed-electric-motorbike

For the modern languages I use (Java, Scala and Gherkin) an IDE is great, and I wouldn't be without one even if I did spend a large number of years writing in plain text editors. OpenSCad is like taking a step back to those days, but fortunately the language is simple enough that a text editor is fine. Code-wise it's a bit like writing in C

I'll add a vote for TinkerCad as it's really easy to use for basic designs. Blender is very good, and is worth spending some time learning if you want to create more complex designs. Both are visual tools, so you can see how it looks as you work.

I'm not sure I would recommend OpenSCad to start with even though I use it. It's great for parametric designs and anything that needs calculations, but it requires a certain mindset. The language is easy enough, it's thinking in design terms and then translating it into code that causes some people problems. If you do want to try it, grab the latest development snapshot rather than the stable version as it has all the documented features.

One cup of coffee later...embossed text in OpenSCad

$fn=1;

difference() {
    // Create block
    translate([-50, -5, -10]) cube([100, 10, 10]);
    
    // Subtract text
    translate([0, 0, -2])
        linear_extrude(height=2, center=false)
            text(text="Stargazer's Lounge", size=5, font="Courier New:style=Bold", halign="center", valign="center");
}

15 hours ago, JamesF said:

Oooh, I have just printed out a box with a latch and an "in place" hinge, so the two halves of the box close together, but there is no break in the hinge that joins them and they cannot be separated.  That really is rather cool.  It was only a small test piece to see if it would work (planning ahead for my box of driver bits as mentioned above), but now I can see lots of potential uses.

What would be very handy now would be the ability to add text to a design in openscad, so I can make labels for the lids.

James

Print in place hinges and joints are very handy. Some of my early design experiments used them

It looks like 3D text should be possible. Looking at the cheat sheet and manual I think it would be via a linear extrude of 2D text. I've yet to try it though. Maybe a job for later today