just the other day, i finally managed to get a good image from noaa 19. thank you so much, Thought Emporium, you gave me the idea, and the drive to finally finish it, and I have said that i will do this as my epq, so if it works, you will be respnsible for getting me an extra qualification, and you may even be responsible for me getting an apprenticeship
@Curtis Maverick no, its a scam. It says it's doing things like "deciphering password hash", then charges you $8 to view the password. You cannot just decipher a hash, its mathematically impossible. It would take millenia of bruteforcing to do what they claim to be able to do in a few minutes. Please don't give them any money
Either you bit is dull or your feeds are off. Your wood shouldnt be burnt if cut properly on that CNC mill. Crank up the Feedrate or exchange your bit for a sharper one. :-)
I can't help but imagine that a belted system would be simpler to manufacture and cheaper to manufacture. Even a threaded rod system would probably be easier and more accurate. Gears are great, but a simple gearing system like this is going to give a lot of slop.
may i suggest you try to make worm gear for the stepper motor that drives the up and down tilt. this would remove a lot of slop and add a higher degree of repeatability. one way you can do it is by CNC out multiple gears of the one you all ready use on the stepper. then glue them together with a twist. then use a file to smooth out the transitions between each gear or 3d print it
I was gonna suggest a double gear setup... small gear, big gear - small gear, big gear. Either way will work, I think... that poor stepper has to try to start, and stop a lot of inertia.
I didn't think of a worm gear to be honest. And what do you mean by "no mechanical advantage"? Small gear > big gear - small gear attached directly to driven big gear > big gear to load. And didn't think about the backlash either. See? isn't the internet great?? discuss ideas and go from there.
Ah, I didn't understand your linkage at first. Worms are awesome for high reduction ratios with minimal numbers of teeth meshing (so low backlash). Rollers are even better. I designed a telescope drive years ago using home-workshop quality worm gears turning roller-driven trunnions. The beauty was that the zero-backlash roller system reduced the already small backlash in the worm assembly. Would be overkill here, I think the absolute accuracy of driving a radio dish can be fairly lax.
slam not to be dick but you come of as a bit condescending. why i suggested the worm gear was not just to lower the load on the stepper, but to remove more of the slob/jerk present in the first little helical setup. you can't really reinvent the gear or gearing methods, only the way you make them. of course you can discuss ideas, but some ideas are more useful than others in a given situation. the time spent in professional engineering is usually 90% designing 10% making. (often you don't even do the making,you just sent it of to a unlucky machinist who then has to figure out how to make it) now this antenna setup is not really that important and this is a hobby thing ist ok to be kinda janky. hobby engineering is usually closer to 30% designing 30% making 10% swearing and then 30% remaking/fixing
Looking good. Suggest using a toothed belt drive instead of gears, that will help get rid of any backlash. Something like a timing belt will do. Could even use a bicycle chain and sprockets. Hope that helps
I would recommend investing $40 in forstner bits rather then the spade bits. MUCH bette mr holes, more diameters, and don’t junk up your wood. Plus, you can more easily countersink things as it gives you a near flat hole. Let me know what you think.
lookin forward to part 2...though you will have much finer control using a worm drive than a cog gear, if coupled with an ultra fine planetary gearset you should be able to achieve super precise control with very little bounce back
Lazy susans for food are not very sturdy for that kind of weight. The mechanism itself can be made to be very sturdy, but buying a retail lazy susan is not going to cut it unfourtunatly.
Vnifit The bearings are often referred to by the same name, and while not very common, they can be bought with specs similar to other linear motion designs. They are also used in some industrial applications that I have seen pictures of in the past while researching. My main interest in them was around 3 years ago when I was building an automated large 360 degree product photography setup for high end race bicycles. Not exactly CNC machine level stability/precision, but it worked and seems on par with this type of structure and design. They can easily handle a stable 60lb downhill race bike in a setup where any motion would be visible in the photography. I wound up using a bearing I sourced from a large retail shimano bike parts display for free. The cabinet lasted for years with a few hundred pounds of parts (bike pedals/chains/tools/components) and the weight of the metal floor to ceiling cabinet getting spun. The actual bearing on that one was around 20-30cm in diameter with a sandwiched grooved bearing race all the way around. The actual bearing was less than 2cm × 2cm in cross section. It didn't have any noticable slop or anything. They are pretty common on large retail displays. If anyone is ever looking to go dumpster diving, large displays get thrown out a lot. Surprisingly, they are usually custom fabricated using hobby level junk and hacked together. There's a lot of cool stuff that can be sourced from them like LEDs power supplies and mechanical parts. -Jake
Anyone who complained about the quality of cogsworth clearly hasnt spent much time developing something. He was quick and dirty, exactly as a prototype/proof of concept should be. Whats the point making something fancy and pretty if you arent even sure its going to work?
You way want to look into equatorial mounts. I'm not sure it would be much help in this case but it may be helpful in future projects. They are amazing for astronomy because at higher magnifications the rotation of the earth becomes very apparent. You have to take long exposure images because deep space objects are so feint. Equatorial mounts are the best for astrophotgraphy because once you find your target, you just need to track in one direction instead of the x and y direction like with an alt-az Mount. Not sure if it benifits at radio wavelengths but it might be worth a shot. Btw, if you want a low cost proof of concept and already have A DSLR, build a Barndoor Tracker. It lets you take wide field shots of the Milkyway with minimal blurring. There's already lots of examples and designs on the Internet.
Impressive project, as always. :) Can you imagine how badass it'd be to hear the lunar reconnaissance orbiter!?! xD That'd be an incredible DIY youtube achievement.
Something you may want to consider is roller bearings some distance away from the thrust bearing, that will arrest any wobble in the Az axis. This is something I didn't do in mine that I 3D printed and paid the price dearly for it. Granted I thought a lazy suzan was a great thrust bearing other than a wee little bit of slidey slidey.... It definitely is NOT a great bearing lol Make sure you keep your counterweight inline with your antenna otherwise the balance will be screwy (another dumb thing I did initially), remember the more counterweight you put, further away will also impact on the rotational inertia. Accelleration and decelleration is critical too! otherwise you will skip steps. And you guessed it, all dumb things I got wrong when I started my journey down the rabbit hole :) Mine is going to be for catching the ellusive QSO with the international space station :D Hopefully me 5 cents saves you a weeeee bit of pain
Not sure what your budget is like, or if you need anything beyond plain prototyping, but xometry might be a useful resource if you want to reduce hands-on machining and the time that it takes up.
If you ever experience the pleassure of having to cut plastic again try using a soldering gun or your soldering iron ;) Melting it is easier and more precise than cutting according to my experience
The GNU Radio script sounds interesting.... it'd be good if you could have some kind of script that can do all the processing (semi) automatically instead of the rather tortuous process of export it from this, then load into into that, then export it from something else to load it........... it'd be better if you could capture data, which the computer grind away, and then get a picture.
Could the aluminium rod that sticks through the parabolic antenna in order to hold the receiver maybe cause signal noise through reflections? Wouldn't it be better to use something RF transparent there?
Dear Mr Thought,my school has been allocated a budget of about $30k to create a lab where students can get into robotics, project building, etc., basically your stuff. Incidentally, a friend and I are partly responsible for suggesting what all equipment we should get. We will be getting 30 or so microcontrollers and a 3D printer for sure, but I would like a few suggestions from you regarding what other stuff we might require
You NEED to visit space come (he is a RU-vidr) but I told him about you in a Live stream and he has loads of expensive equipment for pointing things at satilites and he also has lots of equipment for receiving data from satilites I'm definitely Shye he wouldn't mind getting a couple more subscribers from a collab ( I think he has less) he also lives in the USA .. PLEASE DO A COLLABORATION!!!
It is suprisingly cheap, the space that he works in is not his so he doesn't pay for that and the materials are not as expensive as you think. The antenna he had I actually bought a couple weeks ago on amazon.ca for 130 bucks canadian. The most expensive thing you saw here was likely the HackRF at about USD $500, which he reused from the original project.
Vnifit thank you for the info! I wish I could be in a country where all these equipments are readily available... the issue I face is shipping costs and nosy government that would try me for terrorism the minute I purchase this.
Shit, where do you live? I mean these antennas aren't used for anything nefarious, they are made for long range WiFi connections, but the government doesn't always understand that haha (see chemistry glassware in Australia).
Hey guys ! We are currently trying to make one but we would like to have some help (especially for software) so do you know any people/forums where we can adress our questions ? Thanks :)
I'm wondering this exact question myself, I've coicidentally bought that exact antenna as he has for GOES-16 capturing, and am also waiting for the NooElec GOES LNA that is just now on sale since August 1st. I'm really hopeing even with the loss it could work.
there seem to be something weird with your hack saw, it looks like you are not biting during the stroke, is your blade dull? are you not bearing down on it? Great work btw. For cheap limited angular range transmission without backlash, you can try a cable drive, you might have better results than gears with a big modulus ( ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-jKZIvseA1Nk.html ). There is also the concept of remote center of rotation (but it might imply a more complex build), in your case it could be useful to rotate the antenna around its center of gravity without actually skewering a shaft through said center of gravity, depending on circumstances it's better than adding a counterweight.
a bit off topic, but a method for graphene making simillar to yours is found here www.graphene-battery.net/graphene.htm (method 4 if you scroll down) Can you please try it ?
@@thethoughtemporium i can imagine. can you atleast add units in editing? so when you say something in inches it shows the metric translation somewhere on the screen, and vise versa for imperial? atleast you'r eusing celsius so that's good.