Well, I've been working on the radio telescope a lot—I mean a lot. It's honestly all I've been working on for a while. So why haven't there been any blog posts about it?! For the past few months, I've just been working on making CAD models for each component I'm going to have to print out, and as someone who has never used CAD and is not an engineer but an astrophysicist, there has been a lot to get used to—and making blog posts about how my CAD modeling is going seems pretty boring. I felt like making posts about black hole spin and the ethics of messaging aliens was more interesting. I have file upon file of CAD models, revisions, and little tweaks stacked on top of each other. Even after I thought I had perfected them and printed them out, I noticed issues I had to go back and fix. But I also have many parts already done!
Ranging from the chassis to the fans to the gears, I have a lot to update you all on—and that's what this blog is for!
One of the most important parts I've finished is the chassis. It's a circular box with two cutouts for fans that will provide constant airflow to the components, a front panel that will hold all the switches and knobs needed to control the electronics inside, and mounting points for the internal components and wiring. It's huge, though; with a diameter of 500 mm and a height of around 250 mm, I have to print it in eight different parts. I have two printed, and I'll be printing the rest soon. Each print takes about a day, and I won't be home the rest of the week, so I'll continue printing them next week.
I've finished and printed the gear for my NEMA 17A motor as well. This motor/gear will rotate the entire telescope clockwise and counterclockwise. This was honestly one of the most fun things to create, since I love messing with gears and gear ratios, so being able to custom-make one with a specific gear ratio was more rewarding than I expected.
I've also made many other smaller components, including fans, feet for the chassis legs, and custom nuts and bolts that were specifically made to work well with every part of the telescope. Here's a video below where I go through each part:
So it's going to be sunny with a chance of rain… no, I'm just joking. In the next update, I'll probably have the entire chassis finished, and then make a video about it and go through what each part does and what the entire telescope is going to look like—because believe it or not, it's almost done… well, in CAD. If I have any other parts done as well, I'll show you all of them. In the meantime, stay curious and jovian.