Maker Pro
Maker Pro

telescope

R

Rich Grise

Jan 1, 1970
0

My client is bidding on one of these:
http://mysite.verizon.net/richgrise/images/Dish-Frame-Partial.gif

And I get to design the tooling fixtures that will hold the sticks
in place while we build the trusses. I haven't drawn in the
circumferential struts yet; I envision them shipping the hub
and 16 trusses and a whole pile of struts to the site, and bolting
it together the way the carnies do a roller coaster. :)

It's not electronics, except for the signals it reflects to the
feed horn; I honestly don't know if it's for satellite comm or
a radio telescope, a la the VLA. I'm sure that as soon as we get
the PO, I'll find out. :)

Cheers!
RIch

Cheers!
Rich
 
J

John Fields

Jan 1, 1970
0
My client is bidding on one of these:
http://mysite.verizon.net/richgrise/images/Dish-Frame-Partial.gif

And I get to design the tooling fixtures that will hold the sticks
in place while we build the trusses. I haven't drawn in the
circumferential struts yet; I envision them shipping the hub
and 16 trusses and a whole pile of struts to the site, and bolting
it together the way the carnies do a roller coaster. :)

It's not electronics, except for the signals it reflects to the
feed horn; I honestly don't know if it's for satellite comm or
a radio telescope, a la the VLA. I'm sure that as soon as we get
the PO, I'll find out. :)

Cheers!
RIch

Cheers!
Rich
 
J

John Larkin

Jan 1, 1970
0
Did you get to work on this beast?

Bob

Only a very minor role. They have installed about 60 RTDs in various
parts of the structure to measure temperature, to adjust for thermal
growth. We're going to supply the data acquisition stuff for the RTDs.
They need about 0.1 C longterm accuracy.

This is an impressive dish. It works to 100 GHz and has an adaptive
surface to keep a near-perfect shape. One of the antennas is a
64-pixel imager, sort of like a real optical telescope. I'd never
heard of a radio telescope that had more than a simple antenna at the
prime focus.

Great pics on the web site.

John
 
J

John Larkin

Jan 1, 1970
0
My client is bidding on one of these:
http://mysite.verizon.net/richgrise/images/Dish-Frame-Partial.gif

And I get to design the tooling fixtures that will hold the sticks
in place while we build the trusses. I haven't drawn in the
circumferential struts yet; I envision them shipping the hub
and 16 trusses and a whole pile of struts to the site, and bolting
it together the way the carnies do a roller coaster. :)

It's not electronics, except for the signals it reflects to the
feed horn; I honestly don't know if it's for satellite comm or
a radio telescope, a la the VLA. I'm sure that as soon as we get
the PO, I'll find out. :)

Cheers!
RIch

Cheers!
Rich

How big?

John
 
P

Phil Hobbs

Jan 1, 1970
0
John said:
Only a very minor role. They have installed about 60 RTDs in various
parts of the structure to measure temperature, to adjust for thermal
growth. We're going to supply the data acquisition stuff for the RTDs.
They need about 0.1 C longterm accuracy.

This is an impressive dish. It works to 100 GHz and has an adaptive
surface to keep a near-perfect shape. One of the antennas is a
64-pixel imager, sort of like a real optical telescope. I'd never
heard of a radio telescope that had more than a simple antenna at the
prime focus.

Great pics on the web site.

John

Cool--that's some crystal set they've got there: 80-275 GHz! MM waves
can tell you a lot of things about the interstellar medium, because
that's where the thermal emission of cold interstellar objects peaks.

I had an undergraduate research assistantship back in 1980-81, doing
some simulations for millimeter-wave (110-115 GHz) imaging of carbon
monoxide in interstellar giant molecular clouds. My professor, Bill
Shuter, had a mm-wave telescope of about 5m diameter, with a filter-bank
signal processor and cooled parametric amplifier front end. They never
let me touch any of the neat electronics. :(

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs
 
R

Rich Grise

Jan 1, 1970
0

42' 4" diameter. We can only fit one truss at a time in our shop.

The hub is about 3' in diameter, so each truss is a little over
20 feet long; and if oriented orthogonally, over 10' tall. Of
course, we'll design our fixture so that it's kind of tilted,
both for balance and to save space, albeit that makes it closer
to 25' long and about 7' or 8' high.

Say, John, you're a gazillionaire - if you need any precision
fab done, we're only an email away!

That's richardgrise[at]yahoo.com, but elide ard. ;-)

Cheers!
Rich
 
J

John Larkin

Jan 1, 1970
0
42' 4" diameter. We can only fit one truss at a time in our shop.

The hub is about 3' in diameter, so each truss is a little over
20 feet long; and if oriented orthogonally, over 10' tall. Of
course, we'll design our fixture so that it's kind of tilted,
both for balance and to save space, albeit that makes it closer
to 25' long and about 7' or 8' high.

Say, John, you're a gazillionaire - if you need any precision
fab done, we're only an email away!


I'll keep that in mind, but we avoid serious machining, because it's
too expensive. We prefer punched/folded sheet metal and laser-cut
plastic stuff.

We just decided to do a new line of small-box (7x5x2.25 inches)
products and looked over the usual suppliers of enclosures... Hammond,
Bud, Buckeye, Rose, like that. Everything was too expensive or not
quite right mechanically, or had grounding/thermal problems, so we
designed our own. Turns out you can generally have a sheet-metal shop
run off a batch of custom enclosures cheaper than you can buy+modify
the standard stuff.

I'll post some pics of our design. A bunch of people had good ideas,
so it's cheap, very versatile, and should look good.

Buckeye does have one interesting process. They nc machine flat pieces
of plastic and then heat-bend them into very clever interlocking
snap-together shapes, with all the device and mounting holes,
standoffs, and lettering done at once. They can even do copperclad
plastic for intenal shielding.

John
 
J

John Larkin

Jan 1, 1970
0
Even more impressive is that beanpole crane. Seems held down just by 4 bolts
on a 6' square, yet manages to soar upwards forever. There's no way it
should stay up, never mind do any actual work.

I can't imagine how they got all this gear up onto a 15,000 foot
mountain peak in rural Mexico. One of the guys told us how, for the
first few hours, people get merely exhausted, and then the serious
altitude problems start to kick in.

John
 
J

John O'Flaherty

Jan 1, 1970
0
I can't imagine how they got all this gear up onto a 15,000 foot
mountain peak in rural Mexico. One of the guys told us how, for the
first few hours, people get merely exhausted, and then the serious
altitude problems start to kick in.

According to the accompanying book, they built a 20 km access road up
the mountain.
 
J

Jim Thompson

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hey, John, I'm coming down to Burlingame and Foster City across the Bay
Bridge a lot of times this next few months. I'm what Jim T. calls an
extreme leftist weenie in that I'm a statewide faculty union officer coming
down for what Jim certainly believes are plots against the establishment.

Plot, plot, plot away. Here in AZ we're systematically doing away
with unions. Multiple suits in Federal courts against them for
creating fake non-profit corporations that spread falsehoods about
anyone they're trying to unionize.

[snip]

...Jim Thompson
 
E

Eeyore

Jan 1, 1970
0
Jim said:
RST Engineering \(jw\) said:
Hey, John, I'm coming down to Burlingame and Foster City across the Bay
Bridge a lot of times this next few months. I'm what Jim T. calls an
extreme leftist weenie in that I'm a statewide faculty union officer coming
down for what Jim certainly believes are plots against the establishment.

Plot, plot, plot away. Here in AZ we're systematically doing away
with unions. Multiple suits in Federal courts against them for
creating fake non-profit corporations that spread falsehoods about
anyone they're trying to unionize.

[snip]

...Jim Thompson

When does AZ bring back slavery ?

Graham
 
J

Jan Panteltje

Jan 1, 1970
0
When does AZ bring back slavery ?

Graham


After Obama becomes president, and a race based civil war splits
the US in N and S again.
 
C

ChairmanOfTheBored

Jan 1, 1970
0
After Obama becomes president, and a race based civil war splits
the US in N and S again.


You're both fucking retarded.

It would be funny to see the donkey with a bunch of gear strapped to
his back, braying as someone in a cowboy hat whips his ass with a crop to
get him moving down the trail.

Then, he might actually be able to claim to have been a productive
member of society... as a pack mule.
 
J

Jan Panteltje

Jan 1, 1970
0
You're both fucking retarded.

It would be funny to see the donkey with a bunch of gear strapped to
his back, braying as someone in a cowboy hat whips his ass with a crop to
get him moving down the trail.

Then, he might actually be able to claim to have been a productive
member of society... as a pack mule.

Mr BorEd,
one of the reasons slavery was abandoned, is that machines became available.
Now with the current deficit, oil payed for in Euros and gold perhaps,
China and Japan withdrawing dollars, you may well soon have to resort to
human resources again.
The joke you make on long ear, may well become your destiny.
Imagine you, pulling your (tank empty) car, uphill, no taxicabs,
whats it called 'ricksha'?
No, you would not get bored, no time for that.

LOL
 
M

MooseFET

Jan 1, 1970
0
After Obama becomes president, and a race based civil war splits
the US in N and S again.


The split if it happens won't be that clean. There is a move underway
to return Texas to Mexico now that all the oil has been pumped out.
 
J

John Larkin

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hey, John, I'm coming down to Burlingame and Foster City across the Bay
Bridge a lot of times this next few months. I'm what Jim T. calls an
extreme leftist weenie in that I'm a statewide faculty union officer coming
down for what Jim certainly believes are plots against the establishment.

I'm mildly anti-union for what I think are valid reasons, not to
mention that I'm too irritable and too disorganized to join
*anything*. The co-founder of my company was once an international
organizer for the Teamsters.
Be that as it may, I'd really like to drop in and say "hi". What are your
offical "visiting hours" and can I bring a bottle of anything decent to make
the time go by pleasantly? Or a chunk of any animal milk fat that has been
rendered and processed?

Well, don't show up before 9:45, because I probably won't be there.
Around noon is good, because I could take you to Zuni for lunch.
We've got a bit of Nevada County grape that you've probably never sampled
before that isn't all that shabby. I'd be honored to bring along a bottle
of the best we produce. Red or white, your choice. Or the cheese if you
wish but that won't be from this part of the world.

We like crispy whites or light reds, pinots or merlots or whatever.
Those "big" tannic zins and stuff are too much for us. Nothing fancy,
just stuff that's easy to drink.

But your real proplem will be to find the place. The intersection is a
nightmare, and most people miss it the first try. Email me and I'll
send you the directions, a mere 3 megabyte PDF file.

John
 
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