Science, Astronomy, & Engineering projects
The Hadley Telescope project was fun to build. I wanted to use this telescope with my GOTO mount so I designed some vixen plates. These plates mounted directly to the original mount assembly. The difference is that you need to print a second mount assembly so that you have 2 mounting locations. See the images below.
You can download the STL file here:
Vixen Plate That Mounts to 2 Hadley Mounting Rings
The Z-offset is the distance in mm from where the 3d printer thinks 0mm is from the bed. If you move the z axis to 0 and take a look, there should be a small gap below the printer tip. This is the Z-Offset.
I will explain how to do all of this on and Ender 3 with a CR Touch installed.
Setting the Z-offset through the menu is straightforward. It is a good idea to manually level the bed with the adjustment screws in order to get the best starting point possible. Once this is done send the printer to “Home”.
If you look on the screen, the printer will be about 10mm above the bed. Go into the settings under “Move Axis” and move the Z axis to the 0mm position. This is where the printer thinks that “0” is at. You should be a couple of mm above the actual printer bed.
Now Go To “Bed Leveling” -> “Probe Z-Offset” and slowly move the printer head down so that 1 piece of paper starts to get snug. Your display should show a negative number.
At this point you need to store this value into memory to that the printer knows how far down it needs to go to get to the bed. On the same menu, move your cursor down to “Store Settings” and press it. You should hear a beep. This will save the value. You should not have to adjust this unless somethings changes, such as moving the bed leveling screws.
I was printing a part on my Creality Ender 3 printer and then all of a sudden, the filament stopped feeding. I got it working again. In this post I’ll got through how to troubleshoot issues like this.
3D printers can only feed filament if the entire system is working properly. If any one part of the system fails, then the printing will stop.
It starts with the extruder stepper motor. This must turn. Secondly, the filament extruder must have enough pressure on the filament to be able to push it through the tube.
The filament move through the extruder tube and then into the end piece. This must be heated and fully up to temperature. Let’s take a look at these one at a time.
This stepper motor has a small friction bushing that pushes up against the filament. The motherboard sends signals to control the speed and direction of the stepper. It is the first part you should look at if you have feed issues.
This small part pushes up against the filament. In my case the housing that holds the bushing broke. The original Ender 3 was shipped with a cheap plastic part and it was poorly designed. I replaced it with a new metal extruder and that solved the issue. Check your printer to make sure that this part is intact and working correctly.
Another part you need to check is the filament tensioner. There is a spring that pushes the bushing against the filament. Make sure there is sufficient pressure against the filament so that it can be pushed through the tubing.
Here is the metal extruder upgrade kit that fixes the broken feeder.
I had an issue with this on a separate occasion. During extreme heat, the filament heater started to melt the extruder tubing and eventually melted filament right in the feed tube. This was during a heat wave where temperatures in my garage were over 111 degrees F. That buildup caused a clog in the tubing and shut down the extruder.
If you hear a banging noise during print. Look at the extruder motor. If it move and then bangs and slips back to it’s original position, you likely have a clog. If so, you will need to remove the tubing from the heater and clean out the tubing. Once the tubing is off, heat up the filament end and then push the supplied brush through the heater to clear out any debris.
This device heats up and melts the filament right before applying the PLA to the print itself. This must be up to full temperature or else the filament will not be able to feed. Check your printer screen and make sure it’s up to the correct temperature. You will see the temperature right next to the bed temperature on the display.
My Hadley Telescope has a basic finder that is 3D printed. It works ok but it lacks the ability to be fine tuned.
I decided to upgrade and get a professional finder – The Celestron Starpointer.
This finder can do the following:
The retical is not a dot, it’s a circle. This is useful since a dot would block the star you are trying to see. With a circle, you can point the telescope to the center and still see what you are looking at.
I designed and printed out a mount that work with the Hadely.
You can download it here.
There are no supports needed but you may need to scale it down. I increased the size to work with my printer and my telescope.
Insert #10 nuts into the two slots and then thread in #10 machine screws. The length should be around 1″
I love the micro fine up and down adjustment. This made the whole process easy. You can adjust as necessary on a bigger object like Jupiter, then you can find smaller objects like Saturn easier than ever before.
There is a switch on the side that turns the laser on. It also increases or decreases the brightness. I find myself forgetting to turn the laser off. There is no auto off feature. If left unchecked, it will drain the batteries if you forget as I did.
It may seem simple to point your telescope and easily find the sun. What could be easier? It’s just a giant fireball in the sky, how hard could it be? In reality, it can be difficult since you cannot look through the finder scope. Without some feedback, this can be frustrating.
Thankfully, there are a number of solar finders available. Today I’ll show you how you can print your own with a 3D printer.
You cannot under any circumstances point your telescope to the sun without a Solar Filter. If you look at the sun without a solar filter, you can be instantly and permanently blinded. You can Search For Filters or even make your own with a filter sheet. I chose to make a mount for a filter sheet. You can download it here for the 127EQ: filter-holder.FCStd
In the video above, you will see how I used my simple 3d printed solar finder. It works by using a small hole in the first plate (the one closest to the front of the telescope). The sun shines through this hole and then it must pass through a second hole. Once it’s through the second hole you know you are close. The final stage is to fine tune the suns image on the 3rd plate.
My Celestron PowerSeeker has a camera piggy back connector. This accepts a 1/4″ machine screw. Simply attach it to this mount and align the front edge parallel to the mount.
You can download the stl file here finder-Body.stl. There are no supports needed and it is quick to print. I used PLA with 30% infill.
The sun is fascinating and you can see sun spots quite easily with almost any telescope. I used a simple webcam to take these images using eyepiece projection.
I want to improve the z bearings to make the telescope smoother going up and down. This can be accomplished by installing high quality ball bearings.
I chose Timken sealed ball bearings since they are high quality and very smooth. They also have a large shaft diameter which is needed for the best stability. #ad Order Them Here
You will need
Zipped Files:
The Hadley can be printed at home with your own 3D printer. The telescope is a 900mm Newtonian reflector. I used an Ender 3 to print out the parts.
I had a lot of fun building mine and have taken some good photos. You can see the rings of Saturn and the craters on the moon. I also saw Jupiter and 4 of it’s moons.
Filament: PLA
The first thing you need to do is to print out the small test part. This part has a hole in it the same size as 1/2″ steel rods that support the telescope. It also has a nut and screw assembly.
Print this out as is and see if you can slide the rods through the hole. Also test if you can slip a 10-24 nut.
Most likely you cannot due to shrinkage. To fix this, measure the actual diameter of your 1/2 rods and then the actual diameter of the printed out test part. Find the difference in % and the scale the parts in your slicer. Print the scaled part again and see if it work. If so, then use this scaling factor to print out all the parts.
I built mine from the bottom up.
The lowest part is the LTA or lower telescope assembly. This assembly holds the mirror cell. The cell has adjustment screws so that you can properly collimate the telescope.
Once this is all printed, you need to install the hex bolts below the mirror itself. This has to be done before you glue the mirror onto the cell. I went to a couple of hardware stores and could not find the right hex bolts, so I just took a 10-24 machine screw several inches long and jammed on a nut prior to installation. That worked out just fine.
On the lower side of the hex bolts, install 3 small springs approximately 1/2″ long. The length is not that critical. You just need some wiggle room to that you can properly align the lower mirror.
Here is a clip from the main tutorial showing how this is done.
I just glued the mirror in place with plain old silicon sealant and it worked great. Be sure to center the mirror in the cell since it will improve your image when properly centered.
The mount interface holds the telescope and allows you to pivot up and down. There are 2 files, one says Planets and the other does not. I could not see any difference between these two files. I just picked one and went from there.
When I first built it I used a rocker box. So I printed out the Z bearings and it works ok. Later I took them off and installed Ball Bearings which worked out better for me. You can checkout that post here.
I also wanted ball bearings so that I could motorized the telescope which I have done. I love the motorized version so much more since it’s a snap to view any object at high magnification.
You can watch the short on YouTube Notice how I can easily adjust the telescope in small increments at high magnification.
The sites are installed next. One goes just above the the mount interface and the other can go on top, or just below the UTA.
The telescope is almost done. The upper telescope assembly holds the focuser and the spider.
You have several choices of spiders and they vary how the diffraction spikes are shown. I chose the James Webb version just because I think its the greatest telescope ever built. It’s just a matter of preference.
Now when you print the spider, you need to embed nuts. This can be done by adding the pause print into your slicer program. The nuts are required to that the three machine screws you insert for the secondary mirror collimation will work. As I recall the designer wanted 6 nuts but you really only need 3. It appears that he designed it with 6 for stability, but 3 work just fine for me and it’s less complicated to print.
