Planetarium Star Projectors

[SpitzSTP]

Base plate is being made on a waterjet and the original 5' aluminum pedestal for the omniscan was dropped off at the welder on Saturday to be shortened to 15" tall. In the meantime, back to the Starscape. Spade lugs being crimped on the main junction box and re-labelling every wire that was cut. Old mask tape tags coming off, the ones I put on there over a year ago, down in the pit.

[SpitzSTP]

All pigtails attached to the junction box after spending a few hours on it every day after work this week. Bloody finger attests to stubborn teflon insulation and repeated slicing just a bit too far. The junction box goes in the hole and the wires attach to the terminal blocks. I am adding the ability to dis-assemble the machine again without cutting the wires, which I had to do last year to get the thing apart in Missouri. Each wire is numbered and corresponds to a matching terminal block position. Although I don't foresee ever moving the machine, it may pay to be prepared. If I can ever get my equity back out of this place I wouldn't mind moving to somewhere like Roswell and putting this all in a dome.

[SpitzSTP]

.75 inch aluminum plate fresh off the waterjet for mounting the AVI Omniscan tower in the rack. I had to sneak away from work and go pick it up yesterday. This plate is really h-e-a-v-y and I wonder how many soda pop cans it took to make it. This plate will go to the machinist next to take off sharp edges and countersink the mounting holes. The opening for the umbilical will be rounded off to prevent snags as the telescoping mount is raised and lowered. I found a machinist on Craigslist a few years ago .. he has a machine shop over by the airport. He has done beautiful precision work making star machine parts for me in the past. I'll pick up the square AVI pedestal from a different guy on Saturday. He chopped it down from 5 feet tall to 15 inches tall and welded it all up. This will then bolt to the plate and the whole thing will mount to the bottom of the rack. If anyone needs an optical breadboard made up out of aluminum or any custom parts made from metal or plastic, this guy can do it for a reasonable price. Send PM and I will give you his number.

[SpitzSTP]

Shortened pedestal back from the welder today. I had to go to the bad part of town to get it, but it was worth it.

[SpitzSTP]

All done.. 120+ connections, hopefully all correct.

[SpitzSTP]

Shortened pedestal back from the welder today. I had to go to the bad part of town to get it, but it was worth it.

Completed mount for the AVI Omniscan back from the machinist today. All sharp edges on the aluminum plate have been rounded out. The rectangular hole for the umbilical has been rounded off and all rough areas left over from the waterjet have been fully machined. The shortened base is bolted to the aluminum plate from underneath using countersunk allen head bolts. This assembly is very heavy and fabricated entirely from aluminum. When the welder cut the base down from 5 feet to 15 inches tall I asked them to make sure that it was square before they welded it back together. When dealing with welders not accustomed to doing precision work as was the case here, the base was about 1/8 inch out of square. Fortunately the machinist fixed this by milling out the top and bottom to make it perfectly square. His mill had just enough travel to do it. Sandblasted and painted it into a precision piece of work. Please PM me if you need machine work or parts fabricated from scratch and I will give you his phone # - his name is Jason. Ready to bolt into bottom of the rack and accept the AVI Omniscan tower assembly. Three vendors required... waterjet, welder and machinist and well worth the wait.

[SpitzSTP]

The Saint STP needs two 300w xenon arc ballasts with remote ignitors so over a year ago I found a perfect open-frame PSU to re-power the 300w short-arc lamps. Trouble is, I could only afford one PSU at the time and it cost 900.00 so I only bought one thinking that I could get the second one later when I could afford it (there is one 300w arc lamp in each hemisphere for a total of 600w). So I attempted to contact the original supplier, Carsan Engineering, last week and found out they were bought out by Excelitas and no longer make this PSU. Other vendors make a similar product but are super expensive (i.e. Warner - $2,500 per unit).. and I need two and they need to be matched. So I kept looking and found a suitable replacement from Auerswald Systems GmbH at a price point < what I paid Carsan. Ignitor says "Warning danger to life!" that is certainly putting it bluntly. The original xenon psu weighed about 80-100 pounds, ignitors about 8 pounds each. These solid-state ballasts fit in the palm of my hand and the ignitors are like a deck of playing cards.

[SpitzSTP]

The original xenon PSU vintage 1981 now retired in a crate in the garage. I have to use the engine hoist to move it around. Hour meters frozen in time from the day it was last used in the nightclub, before it was shut down after a three-day continuous party.

[SpitzSTP]

Advances in technology are astonishing with these solid-state HID light sources that will soon replace the short-arc lamps used in endoscopy and other applications.

http://www.led-professional.com/prod...and-efficiency

[SpitzSTP]

Time to mount it. Grinding out six tack welds that held a screen under the battery tray, which I no longer need. I love the smell of burning metal in the morning.