RE: ARNE's drive

[Tom Droege <tdroege@veriomail.com>]

I just spent the afternoon rebuilding the RA drive on TOM.  Many bad tests 
where the system was grinding into the stop for hours caused the chamois in 
the nut to wear out.  I think it will last a long time if you do not abuse 
it.   I plan to be prepared to just send out a complete new RA drive.  It 
will be about a 15 minute job to replace the whole RA drive when I send you 
a spare.  4 screws, two connectors, and a turnbuckle will do it.

I think the RA drive is not so bad.  It is the DEC drive that wobbles.  Sigh!

Tom Droege

At 06:59 PM 9/14/00 -0700, you wrote:
>Currently, the RA limit switch is set to 0:52 east.
>Since I run for 2.5hrs, that means I end up at 1:38 west,
>a little farther than Tom would like to run the system
>and still have it track well.  I've found that it will
>work that far over.  So I don't think 2.5hrs is anything
>magic; one should be able to set the RA limit switch
>farther east and get close to three hours of tracking.
>Note that the tracking errors are really smooth, as
>indicated by the centroiding plots.  I think Tom has
>a good idea for a telescope drive; it is just not as
>stiff as I would like.  I also suspect that it is not
>terribly reliable and will break down about mid-winter. :-(
>However, nice first attempt.  Being able to track for
>2 or 3 hours really opens up the possible projects for
>such a system.
>   I really need to do a lot of lab tests with this system,
>and just don't have the time.  So I am running it on
>a variety of projects just to see how it performs with
>the understanding that as we calibrate the system better,
>the results can only get better as well.
>Arne