Posts Made By: Joe Conway

On the side here I read up about the hypertuning thread you all were talking about, you know, that company that does that. What a joke.

I especially liked where at the company site they used the term "high resolution sanding".

Anyway, from the pictures they show it appears your main gear is pressed over the bearing with no adjustment. Is this so?

If you ever take your mount apart, please pm me some pictures of the guts.

I can tell you that taking it apart, removing the grease and metal bits that these manufacturers, some, seem to leave in there is a good first start. There is much better grease. We used a flouro type grease for aviation applications. Better load pressure and less prone to freezing temps.

Aluminum gears ain't the greatest. Wear out quickly, thermal expansion problems, etc. Maybe there are some bronze replacements?

Here's a summary. You appear to have only a choice of adjusting the worm to the main gear and that's it. With this in mind, again, check the end play first. Clean and change the grease. Check the end play of the main shaft bearings. You may have to tighten the end play there as well.

This ain't rocket science. Jason added an extra main shaft bearing to the G11. This helps the load allot. You probably don't have that luxury.

Think of this in steps. First the main shaft bearings. Take them out and degrease them. Apply better grease. Put them back in and tighten them rotating the shaft until you get ball tightness. Back off the adjustment until it feels smooth without any end play. Won't be much.

Then move to the worm assembly.

If you have time, you might want to do some "high resolution sanding" while you're at it. That other site says they can "hype tune" your mount. I would assume this is true.

Just a short bit. What you all are refering to is TEM or transverse electromagnetic wave of the laser. Inexpensive diode lasers haven't the best TEM figure. A good laser has a TEM figure of TEM 00. The 00 is usually shown as a subscript but I can't type that here. TEM 00 is a nice round spot, with TEM 11 not so great.

The other item you're referring to is called a spatial filter, the hole thingy. It's used to stop down the straying beams. A spatial filter's aperature is about 0.010 inches in diameter for your size lasers. It's critical to position the aperature to the beam. Usually four adjustment screws, up down, left right are used. This way you can project the beam to a target and then adjust the spatial filter such that you get a nice round spot.

You can make a spatial filter with a piece of tin foil. Take about ten small cut pieces of tin foil and stack them. Poke a hole in the center of the stack with a pin, but just barely with the pin point. Use the piece of tin foil in the middle of the stack. It's an old trick used in the lab.

How you position this spatial filter in front of your beam is up to you. Not sure how you'd do it.

Nice specimen from another site.

http://www.pbase.com/radhapriya/image/57459522

top view

http://www.pbase.com/radhapriya/image/57459521

If you don't already use this it helps you get an idea of what your viewing session may be like for any day. Bookmark it as one of your tools.

http://cleardarksky.com/c/Phoenixkey.html

Next time you folks see the Lexus commercial where the car is racing down a runway and they drop another one from a plane and it falls behind the car, that's the airport on the left background of Jason's picture where it was filmed (probably digital). You'll be able to see the same mountain peak in the background of his photo in the commercial.

Let's hope Jason doesn't get hit by any falling cars while he's working with his scope. Even better, having a rattler wrap around your leg trying to get warm on those nice cool nights.

Jason, in keeping with the desert theme I have an observatory that may fit your location.

Here's another picture you could use for your rolloff roof. More like a blowoff roof. Joe

I work in a laboratory clean room. I spend my days trying to break cryogenically cooled sensors and imagers. If someone wants to loan me one of his or her SBIG cameras I’ll lower the dark current and increase the quantum efficiency. It’ll be fun listening to it creak as it shrinks; kind of makes a weird crunching sound. Working with and designing hardware to function at –320 degrees Fahrenheit is a challenge. An advantage of this craft is having the tools to remove all of ones warts.

I work with Jason Lane and he’s the one that told me you could actually look through a lens with your eye. Now that the doctor has removed the cryogenically cooled lens from my eye I can go back to observing with my remaining good eye, at room temperature.

Nice site. One thing I noticed is your "about me" page loads somewhat on the large size. I use Firefox and that may be an issue, but there was no way to read the stuff on the right or left side of the page. Then again it could be my settings which are default, so others may want to look and let you know as well.

Hope this helps and by no means am I trying to be critical. Joe

What I want to know is which one is more fun to watch dry?

Blame the EPA for low VOC with canned paint. Low VOC means long drying times and extremely long period of out gassing. I wouldn't paint the interior of a "sealed" scope with canned paint unless it's allowed to dry for maybe a month. Let your nose tell you. Any odor at all, still out gassing.

Human nature is to do it in one coat and let's see how it looks all put together. I resemble that remark and why smarter people than me exist to keep me safe.

I only know of one brand of paint that's tested for out gassing and you have to mix it and use a sprayer. We know Joe, PTI (Products Techniques, Inc.), either lacquer or epoxy flat black.

http://www.aircraftspruce.com/menus/cs/pti.html

Appears you can buy this in a can but I haven't tried it.