Home made diffraction grating

Alan French wrote:

I believe that the Amateur Scientist column in Scientific American had at
least one article on actually ruling a diffraction grating. (Just in case
anyone is really ambitious.)

I thought you were a nice guy, Alan, and here you are leading the
unsuspecting down a primrose pathway. Here's what Uncle Al Ingalls
said in the June 1952 Scientific American:

" . . The specifications are fantastic, but even more fantastic is the
ruling engine that has been contrived to do the job. This machine,
less complex in structure than a typewriter, is the most precise
mechanism ever made. It is so transcendently difficult to build and
operate that it has challenged man's mechanical genius and humbled his
pride for more than a century . . Why has this simple machine
frustrated so many able men? The dream of building a ruling engine has
haunted hundreds and ruined many. Recently a friend . . talked of long
deferred plans to quit his vocation and build an engine. "Over my dead
body!" exclaimed his wife, to whom he had once unwisely revealed that
a man might spend 10 nonproductive years curing a chronic case of
ruling engine fever the hard way . . When an Australian nurseryman
named H.J. Grayson
died after years of this acute malady . . his widow bitterly burned
all his ruling engine papers.
The central difficulty that has defeated so many efforts is the
inherent deformability of any material of which a machine may be built
.. . On the scale of ultra-ultra precision with which we must deal in
a ruling engine we may regard the machine as being made of rubber. In
effect it has just about the same problem as an intoxicated man called
upon to pass a test of sobriety: it must place the tip of its finger
(the diamond) on the tip of its nose (the groove position) within a
millionth of an inch, and it must do this with a rubber arm and body!"

I'm going to have to speak to Susan about your postings. Maybe she
can influence you to desist from these subversive suggestions.

Your friend, Howie

"Howie Glatter" wrote in message
om...
Alan French wrote:

I believe that the Amateur Scientist column in Scientific American had
at
least one article on actually ruling a diffraction grating. (Just in
case
anyone is really ambitious.)

I thought you were a nice guy, Alan, and here you are leading the
unsuspecting down a primrose pathway. Here's what Uncle Al Ingalls
said in the June 1952 Scientific American:

" . . The specifications are fantastic, but even more fantastic is the
ruling engine that has been contrived to do the job. This machine,
less complex in structure than a typewriter, is the most precise
mechanism ever made. It is so transcendently difficult to build and
operate that it has challenged man's mechanical genius and humbled his
pride for more than a century . . Why has this simple machine
frustrated so many able men? The dream of building a ruling engine has
haunted hundreds and ruined many. Recently a friend . . talked of long
deferred plans to quit his vocation and build an engine. "Over my dead
body!" exclaimed his wife, to whom he had once unwisely revealed that
a man might spend 10 nonproductive years curing a chronic case of
ruling engine fever the hard way . . When an Australian nurseryman
named H.J. Grayson
died after years of this acute malady . . his widow bitterly burned
all his ruling engine papers.
The central difficulty that has defeated so many efforts is the
inherent deformability of any material of which a machine may be built
. . On the scale of ultra-ultra precision with which we must deal in
a ruling engine we may regard the machine as being made of rubber. In
effect it has just about the same problem as an intoxicated man called
upon to pass a test of sobriety: it must place the tip of its finger
(the diamond) on the tip of its nose (the groove position) within a
millionth of an inch, and it must do this with a rubber arm and body!"

I'm going to have to speak to Susan about your postings. Maybe she
can influence you to desist from these subversive suggestions.

Howie,

You mean you're not heading into your shop and starting work on a ruling
engine? G I am continually amazed at what some ambitious folks manage to
do, and the Amateur Scientist column certainly had some interesting
examples. I suspect, however, that more than a bit of insanity would be
required to try ruling your own diffraction grating. I think a seismograph
would be a more reasonable, and interesting project.

Clear skies, Alan

Ruling engines for the hobbiest are no primrose path no matter how you
dice it. Their very nature makes that self-evident and anyone attempting
one would find that out straightaway. That was what Ingalls was saying.
Scientific American had a kind of elitist attitude when it came to its monthly
projects, or nonprojects as the case sometimes was. Parts availability often
fell short of suggested reality, and of course everyone had a 12" lathe and
2 ton marble slab in their basements just wating to be used! There was often
something stoggy and Limbauesque about much of this, as if these projects
were being handed down by an Angel for mortals to wrestle with and be
brought into submission by. The next month would bring an even more impossible
puzzle. Thank God the text of the magazine did not follow a
similar line of thought ....... or lack of thought.

The thought of making one's own grating today really is a bit bizzare, or a
throwback idea, not to mention the inherent problematics. Buy the $3.00
gratings the guy suggests above and save your sanity... and your finger
nails.

And once you have built the ruling machine what in hell will you do with
it then? Peel mangos?

Paul.




Howie Glatter wrote:

Alan French wrote:

I believe that the Amateur Scientist column in Scientific American had at
least one article on actually ruling a diffraction grating. (Just in case
anyone is really ambitious.)

I thought you were a nice guy, Alan, and here you are leading the
unsuspecting down a primrose pathway. Here's what Uncle Al Ingalls
said in the June 1952 Scientific American:

" . . The specifications are fantastic, but even more fantastic is the
ruling engine that has been contrived to do the job. This machine,
less complex in structure than a typewriter, is the most precise
mechanism ever made. It is so transcendently difficult to build and
operate that it has challenged man's mechanical genius and humbled his
pride for more than a century . . Why has this simple machine
frustrated so many able men? The dream of building a ruling engine has
haunted hundreds and ruined many. Recently a friend . . talked of long
deferred plans to quit his vocation and build an engine. "Over my dead
body!" exclaimed his wife, to whom he had once unwisely revealed that
a man might spend 10 nonproductive years curing a chronic case of
ruling engine fever the hard way . . When an Australian nurseryman
named H.J. Grayson
died after years of this acute malady . . his widow bitterly burned
all his ruling engine papers.
The central difficulty that has defeated so many efforts is the
inherent deformability of any material of which a machine may be built
. . On the scale of ultra-ultra precision with which we must deal in
a ruling engine we may regard the machine as being made of rubber. In
effect it has just about the same problem as an intoxicated man called
upon to pass a test of sobriety: it must place the tip of its finger
(the diamond) on the tip of its nose (the groove position) within a
millionth of an inch, and it must do this with a rubber arm and body!"

I'm going to have to speak to Susan about your postings. Maybe she
can influence you to desist from these subversive suggestions.

Your friend, Howie

I think a seismograph
would be a more reasonable, and interesting project.

Having worked at Bausch & Lomb in the early '60s, where they had many ruling
engines working 24/7, I can tell you that they were all pretty good
seismographs.

Roland Christen

"Lurking Luser" wrote in message k.net...
Centro de Observação Astronómica no Algarve has a little program to make
diffraction gratings with a home printer. But it has some limitations. First
the resolution is maxed at 720 dpi and second the pattern is round wasting a
large amount of the transparency.

So I have several question for the group.

1. Is the idea feasible?
2. Is 1200 dpi achievable or even desirable?
3. Would I be better off use 600 etching per inch in both quality and
defraction of starlight?
4. Are you better of putting the grating at the eyepiece or the objective?
5. Is there a simple way or producing this pattern in PhotoShop?

Thanks in advance and clear skies,
James King

A good diffraction grating could be done by using spider's web:
Here are a few tips:
1. find a good old spider who does not mind to share
2. do not use strands that made for catching flys, but that used by
spider for walking on
3. do not try to put the strands parallel - it is almost imposible by
counting the diamer of it ~2.5mk, but put one after other and remove
each second later!

Of coarse it is hell of work and if it is too difficult, the rest of
the web could be used for cross-hair for eyepiece.
(-:
Regards, Yuri

Alan French wrote:


Howie,

You mean you're not heading into your shop and starting work on a ruling
engine? G I am continually amazed at what some ambitious folks manage to
do, and the Amateur Scientist column certainly had some interesting
examples. I suspect, however, that more than a bit of insanity would be
required to try ruling your own diffraction grating. I think a seismograph
would be a more reasonable, and interesting project.

Brian Manning, the man who built the "DIY" ruling engine still
has a website where it is discussed.

http://www.britastro.org/iandi/manning2.htm


and as its says there :

This article was originally published in the 'Amateur Scientist' column
of Scientific American, 232(4), April 1975, and here appears in a
modified form. Brian was an engineering draughtsman when the basic work
was completed, and a laboratory technician with the Department of
Engineering, University of Birmingham (UK), when the article was
originally published. He had the distinction of being the first amateur
to make diffraction gratings of unsurpassed optical quality with an
instrument of ultimate mechanical precision - a ruling engine. This
project occupied him for two decades. He subsequently devised a
refinement to his ruling engine (see Addendum, above) by utilising the
piezoelectric effect on a crystal to minimise the 'rubbery' consistency
of metal at the molecular level that his ruling engine probed. After his
retirement he received an honorary PhD from his university and was
awarded the Horace Dall Medal of the British Astronomical Association.

Steve

On Sat, 28 Aug 2004 19:50:13 +0100, Steve Taylor
wrote:


Brian Manning, the man who built the "DIY" ruling engine still
has a website where it is discussed.

http://www.britastro.org/iandi/manning2.htm

Steve

Brian's a mate/buddy and I prepared including the text referred to, as
then BAA I&I webmaster, to resurrect the original SciAm articleg.

BTW - think I read all the messages but nobody said what they would
[politely!] do with said [printed] grating! A practical and easier
intermediate route eg stellar spectrum via diffraction, simple devises
like a tennis/badminton racket or a fine kitchen sieve work at

http://www.astroman.fsnet.co.uk/begin.htm

Maurice Gavin @ Worcester Park Ob - UK
www.astroman.fsnet.co.uk = home of practical amateur spectroscopy

"Chris1011" wrote in message
...
I think a seismograph
would be a more reasonable, and interesting project.

Having worked at Bausch & Lomb in the early '60s, where they had many
ruling
engines working 24/7, I can tell you that they were all pretty good
seismographs.

Roland,

I would think so. Did they make everyone where soft-soled shoes and tread
lightly in the halls and stairs?

Clear skies, Alan

I would think so. Did they make everyone where soft-soled shoes and tread
lightly in the halls and stairs?

The ruling engines were 100 ft below street level down on bedrock.

Roland Christen