Chriske

Peter just finished drawing the lower(conical) part of Saturn's LUT. This is a screenshot taken with his smartphone This is just one of the many rather complex junction of that lower part...

Still at it, Just finished one of the LUT's floors. The floor need some painting and I need to add the typical red perimeter around each floor. We need 18 of these. LUT alone will be 3.4m high.

Still at it... ETL maybe next week...

Hold your horses Rob...!..😳 This thing will never work, it was never intended to do so. It's only a 1:7 scale model to be added to the rest of the models in our local observatory. The mirrors are flats. I was lucky that the set hex. IKEA mirrors are exactly the size I needed. They come in a set of 5 'aluminium' + 5 'goldisch' coating. So in the end I'll end up with 20 alu hex. mirrors. with no purpose.

The two attempts, described higher up, to glue that sec. mirror are not 'standard' procedures. (in fact completely wrong, sorry) During course we always glue the sec mirror with only three small dots of silicone(near the edge). Distance between mirror and holder about 2mm, to allow better and evenly cooling of the mirror. During our nearly 40 years of course we've glued literal hundreds of sec mirrors. never had any issues. Look at the shape of the defocused stars and look at the shape of the silicone ring... Seems familiar...?

Will it work...? Well, I do not know yet, just like its big brother it needs lots of testing..😉😁 Compared to the other rocket projects I've posted here there's not to much printing involved this time. The mirror supports a few minor parts will be printed. The rest is plywood, aluminium poles, some steel cables and the mylar sheets.

To late, JWST will be launched next month...😁

Busy assembling JWST primary mirror.

Not my cup of tea....😳😳😳😳

ok, now I'v got it..! I thought the upper grey and black part were also printed...silly me...😁 Suggestion, change the threaded rod with something more stable, as Peter also explained. I'd print a wedge to fill in that gap + a little possible polar tuning. Or is there really need for that long threaded rod..? That rod btw: nice print, very nice print indeed...!

Hey, Nice 3D-print project. Could you explain a bit more how this tracker works. I can't figure out how you track stars with this device(it's probably me, I know, sorry...😳)

One row done, seven more to go... Need to buy 470 nuts and bolts M3...😯

And while we're busy drawing and printing SaturnV parts, I have some spare time at hand so I started building JWST, same scale as HST I made a few years back(1:7). In this project there are (almost) no printed parts. JWST will be 3m long and 2m wide. The primary mirror will be almost 1m diameter. Lucky me these hexagonal mirror are for sale, they have a 'golden' reflection layer and on top of it they do have the correct size for this model. The only printed parts for this project are the primary mirror holders. These holders have different angles to simulate the curve of that 1m mirror. For testing I use regular mirrors to avoid scratches. When all is done I'll glue the 'golden' one in place.

These (72) panels will be screwed against the elevator shaft. Only the front panel will have doors of course. At the left there are data lines.

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How many printers..? Five, Peter has one, Michel also and for the moment I have 3. How many spools do we need, well don't know yet, but this project will consume lots of filament.

Cool.!!!!?????????????? Ok there are a few others going even higher but this SaturnV ....one word : IMPRESSIVE .!!! What about this one....

We'll see about that in a few weeks, but you forgot to mention petrol. The Crawler runs on petrol...😉 That crawler consumes LOTS of it..! In case of liquid hydrogen and oxygen shortage here, I'll call my good friend Elon..😁

Busy building one last SaturnV. This one will be 4.2 meter high. That includes the Launchplatform and the Crawler. In this assembly these two last two parts are shown as a brown and a blue block. Busy drawing... SaturnV already partially printed. Peter is busy drawing the lower(conical) part of the LUT. Michel is busy drawing the connection parts at the end of the swing-arms I already started printing the caterpillar-shoes for the Crawler and also the central elevator walls. We'll need 464(!) of these shoes... 461 to go...

After a quick search found a few pictures from long ago... Here you can see there's no mirrorsupport at the perimeter of that 10". The mirror is held in place by the central bolt that is glued at the back of the mirror. Just below the mirror you'll see the neoprene ring (the pusher part of the flex unit).

If it is a f/4 mirror you should not flex it. A while ago I posted a thread called 'Printsonian', well that was a flexed 10" f6 primary mirror.

I do have images somewhere, need to search my HD's. But it works just perfect. As a matter of fact using this technique you easily can pull the mirror to any CC you require, from ellipse to hyperbola, as long the mirror is not to thick. That's the beauty of the system.

I know Nigel, but I do have a coater myself(lucky me..😃). Had never any problems coating flexed mirrors at all.

Never tried it myself(!) but maybe this is a easier way. Going to try it one of these days.