GOTO Mark-X Alpha Testing

I have been longing for this. With the shaft couplers and the screws on hand, I proceeded to do the integration this morning. First of all, I found that stainless steel plate which I've bought yesterday was too strong, the electric drill was not doing well on making holes on it, or even just to enlarge the holes. I guess it could with some more persistence but it might kill several drill bits before it could be done.


I have used a very soft aluminium plate which I already had to do the job, and it worked out fine.  In short, here's a short video to show it at work!



Originally, I have mounted the motor on one side but then I found that the 410 head would block its way and thus, I have to move it to the other side of the mount.



Fully assembled and ready for testing.  So, I have attached the heavy DIY mounting plate of the original owner to it, mount my Ranger on one side and the do some ugly solar imaging.

It's really nice to have a motor, you can use it to fine tune the position of the target and you can have the target stay in place without moving the setup a bit.  Vibration of this stepper motor is minimal.  Since I was only testing the motor, I didn't even open the window to shoot the sun, so the image was ugly but then it serves the purpose of testing the motor.  I don't even bother to process it carefully.

So far so good!

Here is a list of pending tasks:

1. To find a good and quick way to remove and re-attach the motor in the field.  I expect my mounting screw and plates will break very soon if I kept them in place during transportation.
2. Fine tune the trimming capacitor with good polar alignment.
3. Further improve the mounting
4. Make a better mounting plate, the existing one was too heavy and it lacks the ability to allow proper balance.
5. Anything else?