Make a telescope using your printer

Wellll, not just any printer, a 3D printer is required.

The first issue of the free "Open Hardware Journal" is available:

http://openhardware.org/journal/2011/11/

from which the PDF issue can be downloaded various ways.

The first article in the issue is "Producing Lenses with 3D Printers".

The article's conclusion:

" While the lenses that have been produced with the outlined technique
" are incomparable to commercial optics, and fall short of the quality
" needed for most visual applications, they are of sufficient quality to
" be used for some low-precision light distribution applications like
" collimating light in a flashlight. Furthermore, the wide variety in
" modes of failure is reason to believe that much higher quality can be
" achieved, since each one, evidently, can be defeated individually. It
" is simply a matter of perfecting the technique.
"
" The author intends to pursue this until he can 3D print a telescope...

:-)

Thad Floryan wrote:
Wellll, not just any printer, a 3D printer is required.

The first issue of the free "Open Hardware Journal" is available:

* * http://openhardware.org/journal/2011/11/

from which the PDF issue can be downloaded various ways.

The first article in the issue is "Producing Lenses with 3D Printers".

The article's conclusion:

" While the lenses that have been produced with the outlined technique
" are incomparable to commercial optics, and fall short of the quality
" needed for most visual applications, they are of sufficient quality to
" be used for some low-precision light distribution applications like
" collimating light in a flashlight. Furthermore, the wide variety in
" modes of failure is reason to believe that much higher quality can be
" achieved, since each one, evidently, can be defeated individually. It
" is simply a matter of perfecting the technique.
"
" The author intends to pursue this until he can 3D print a telescope...

:-)

Wow, I just don't see how that's going to work without a
sizable leap in the resolution of the printer. The P-V error is
on the order of the size of the layers. The best commercial
printers are about 10 um, so that's about 20-wave error,
P-V. Not 1/20-wave, *20*-wave.

--
Brian Tung (posting from Google Groups)
The Astronomy Corner at http://www.astronomycorner.net/
Unofficial C5+ Page at http://www.astronomycorner.net/c5plus/
My PleiadAtlas Page at http://www.astronomycorner.net/pleiadatlas/
My Own Personal FAQ at http://www.astronomycorner.net/reference/faq.html

In sci.astro.amateur message , Mon, 31
Oct 2011 22:38:33, Thad Floryan posted:

Wellll, not just any printer, a 3D printer is required.

The first issue of the free "Open Hardware Journal" is available:

http://openhardware.org/journal/2011/11/

from which the PDF issue can be downloaded various ways.

The first article in the issue is "Producing Lenses with 3D Printers".

The article's conclusion:

" While the lenses that have been produced with the outlined technique
" are incomparable to commercial optics, and fall short of the quality
" needed for most visual applications, they are of sufficient quality to
" be used for some low-precision light distribution applications like
" collimating light in a flashlight. Furthermore, the wide variety in
" modes of failure is reason to believe that much higher quality can be
" achieved, since each one, evidently, can be defeated individually. It
" is simply a matter of perfecting the technique.
"
" The author intends to pursue this until he can 3D print a telescope...

Excellent optics could be ground and polished a couple of hundred years
ago by patient hand work, using in essence only grit and maybe a liquid
_ Jack Aubrey did it, with advice from CH. Nowadays, there is a
shortage of patience.

So the thing to do is to print a grinding and polishing machine, and the
non-optics of telescopes.

--
(c) John Stockton, nr London, UK. Turnpike v6.05 MIME.
Web http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/ - FAQqish topics, acronyms and links;
Astro stuff via astron-1.htm, gravity0.htm ; quotings.htm, pascal.htm, etc.
No Encoding. Quotes before replies. Snip well. Write clearly. Don't Mail News.

On 2 Nov., 23:07, Dr J R Stockton
wrote:

Excellent optics could be ground and polished a couple of hundred years
ago by patient hand work, using in essence only grit and maybe a liquid
_ Jack Aubrey did it, with advice from CH. *Nowadays, there is a
shortage of patience.

So the thing to do is to print a grinding and polishing machine, and the
non-optics of telescopes.

We often accuse modern youth of; "having the attention span of a
gnat." Are we approaching the point beyond which any activity, which
does not produce instant gratification, is no longer attempted? Many
hobbies, which consumed vast numbers of hours of manual activity, are
no longer of interest to most. Are we becoming more lazy with each new
generation? The irony is that we are struggling to develop robots to
carry out boring or unpleasant tasks at a time of dangerously-
increasing levels of unemployment.

Grinding and polishing machines are actually slower than handwork in
manageable sizes. But do offer the optician freedom from physical
participation in the more boring/repetitive aspects of the task.
Thereby freeing him/her for more interesting, entertaining or more
profitable activities. There is an obvious limit to manual working of
ever larger optics even when using sub-diameter tools and laps.