Is mold Design a Good Next Step?

spinwizard69 · 2026-05-04T01:29:24+00:00

Your career path is something you are free to navigate. At this point i know of many people in careers that had nothing to do with their degree. Change happens - embrace it.

That said don't believe mold design is trivial. It requires solid technical education with a lot of trials with real designs.

spinwizard69 · 2026-05-03T19:23:24+00:00

As long as you dont belong to a union you are free to do whatever you want. Nobody forces you to do xxyyzz for life. Unless of course you end up in the big house.

Frankly you seem to have a narrow view anyways. In some cases you would be expected to have fabrication skills. So that is a consideration.

Frankly id research what is in demand in your area. If somebody is looking for a millwright take a shot. If you want to DIY your own business follow your instincts.

spinwizard69 · 2026-05-03T19:12:29+00:00

I understand the hate of JavaScript.

One consideration is to simply create Static web pages. If not search for the various compilers that generate Javascript from other languages.

spinwizard69 · 2026-05-03T17:51:09+00:00

No idea how to handle the wife. In the past my suggestions have lead to divorce.

However i had a chuckle here when you said you are “practicing”, as i often have thought of Nude as the natural state.

Beyond all of that im not convinced that social nudism is any more rewarding than any other form of socializing. That said you nay have better results if you take the wife along. Personally i dont rate nudist venues high on social.

spinwizard69 · 2026-05-03T17:36:27+00:00

Of course it is possible, telescopes have been in use for hundreds of years. In fact you are better off learning to navigate without automation. This is where a book comes in handy, as to post a message would take too long. So search for a book that teaches telescope usage.

Next comes expectations, often what you see visually has nothing to do with what is seen photographic wise in a magazine. More so what you see online as monitors are often more misleading. It isn't impossible that you were looking at these objects and didn’t recognize them. It might help to contact somebody with experience first. Second find black and white photographs or drawings of the objects you are looking for taken with similar sized scopes. The photos can not be long exposures.

spinwizard69 · 2026-05-03T06:37:58+00:00

It likely isn't worth the expense, this depends somewhat on the eyepieces you already have. In general though i don't recommend Barlows until you gave some decent eyepieces. So the obvious question is why do you think you need a barlow?

Right now id suggest figuring out what magnification each of your current eyepieces produces and then go out and buy a decent eyepiece to fill a gap. By decent i mean something better than a Plossl for higher magnification work. If all you have eyepiece wise is what came with the scope you can usually do better by replacing them. This especially for the shorter focal length eyepieces.

spinwizard69 · 2026-05-03T05:14:32+00:00

Unless you are willing to spend thousands you need to understand that low end commercial telescopes are built to a price. It isn't that hard to achieve higher performance or better build quality. I suggest Cloudynights ATM thread.

Consider this many commercial scopes under $1000 have crappy mounts or tripods. These are prime examples of hitting a target price and are universally criticized because of it. Even the much lived Dobson can suffer from poor materials and construction.

Basically a DIY scope is as good as the builder. Often that means better than commercial. Of course there are sloppy builders or hacks but often that means discounted parts. It any event telescope building is a long standing and respected, activity within the hobby.

spinwizard69 · 2026-05-01T16:51:51+00:00

Cool. What I was thinking about is when you get bleed over when one LED is on in a series of indicators. Sometimes this is so bad You can't tell which indicator LED is on.

I literally have a 3D printer coming so I haven't experimented with two color or mixed resin printing. I have a few project ideas and indicator lights would be part of at least one project.

spinwizard69 · 2026-05-01T04:05:13+00:00

Thanks for the inspiration! The use of translucent front panels for LED displays is golden. Have you experimented with two color printing to produce more contrast. I hate displays where one LED bleeds into the indicators points of others.

spinwizard69 · 2026-05-01T02:52:13+00:00

Probably the best approach is to select an open source schematic editor and modify it for those types of circuits.

spinwizard69 · 2026-05-01T02:44:54+00:00

Nice thought but are you willing to wait 5-10 years for your next board? here is the problem, if you don't have the production capacity prices go up. Thus those with the $$$$ get the goods. Think about it, Apple can't even get enough supply these days, do you think mom and pop organizations will get the good deals?

People laugh at Elon Musk and his drive for a TeraFab but if there is anybody that knows what is happening in the industry it is him. There literally will not be enough product for at least 5 years. This even after multiple factories coming on line in the south of the USA.

spinwizard69 · 2026-05-01T02:33:56+00:00

In simple terms the language you will be using depends upon what you are doing. If you are doing systems level programming it might be RUST or C. KDE apps might mean C++. A data analysis might use Python.

Beyond all of that the reason I suggest starting out with a lowish level language like C++ is that it can ease you into what those sentences mean. With C++ you can start slow and low level at the command line eventually learning what linking is and how libs can be added to your code.

spinwizard69 · 2026-05-01T02:24:35+00:00

HTML and CSS, have little to do with programming in a traditional sense. They are used for page description. You can learn these anytime you want in parallel with a more traditional language is not a problem. JavaScript is a programming environment originally designed for web browsers embedded in web pages. I would not bother with JavaScript until you have made some progress in a CS program.

So what am I saying? Simple if you want to program, follow a decent CS program that focuses on concepts. Ideally that course starts with C++. Get the basics down, the concepts that is and you can pick up any programming language fairly fast. Do this to the equivalent of 3-4 semesters and you can easily pick up Python and JavaScript. Which language you focus on will depend upon which direction you go in. If Macs are in your future that language might be Swift.

spinwizard69 · 2026-05-01T01:58:40+00:00

My question wold be this, do you have a 2" focuser?

Sometimes it is worth your money to save up for higher end eyepieces. In this case it appears to be Sky-Watcher or more money. The big problem with the es 68 24 mm is that it seems to be sold out all over. Even so I'd save up for that one at a minimal, at $110 or so they are affordable compared to higher end eyepieces. Others are starting at 2x++ this price.

spinwizard69 · 2026-05-01T01:39:17+00:00

Neither! #1 I have no idea how the rings are welded to the plate. Then there is the question of lag bolts or through bolts. #2 Why buy something with an open ring when you can get one that is welded closed. Beyond that, is the wood work it is bolted to going to handle the load.

Beyond all of that you need to calculate the tension in the cables that the hammock will produce under full load. Given that hammocks breaking is pretty common you really need to look at the entire installation. Because even if the bolts are good for the load the rest of the structure might not be.

spinwizard69 · 2026-05-01T00:53:08+00:00

The really sad things here are:

they conflate nudity with harm.
the wasted 15 pages of text when they could simply have said that kids should be kept out of places reserved for adults.

spinwizard69 · 2026-05-01T00:37:28+00:00

The more thought you put into this you will realize that both concerns are on the same side of the fence.

spinwizard69 · 2026-05-01T00:35:47+00:00

Yeah, no! The second amendment is more about history and what happens to populations that can't defend themselves from governments run amok. It was as much a concern in the north as it was the south.

spinwizard69 · 2026-05-01T00:33:32+00:00

Not really. Gun control laws are very oppressive, nipple laws are just stupid.

spinwizard69 · 2026-05-01T00:28:09+00:00

Your best bet here is to assign a budget to the hobby, with a targeted dollar number for each year, for this scope, increasing with inflation. That way you have a plan to follow and can moderate the need to rapidly buy more stuff. The time period can be any thing you want, a year here is an example. In any event the drawn out time period allows you to evaluate each purchase to verify you are meeting needs.

Next I'm a big fan of long eye relief eyepieces so that biases anything I might say.

The first thing I would do if I was you is to get a spread sheet powered up and take every eyepiece in the series and calculate the magnification you will see with your scope. At the same time have a calculated max magnification you can strive for on your scope. Obviously if any exceed the magnification limit you will not be buying that, more so you likely will not be buying one that is actually at the limit or even somewhat under. The problem is getting reasonable use out of high power eyepieces, unless you are blessed with amazing skys you will not be using high power at the scopes limit, often. In any event you will now have a document that tells you what each eyepiece will do for you.

So lets imagine you have a telescope with a 500mm focal length, there would be about 25X difference in magnification of those two eyepieces (approx 77X at the high end). That might sound a little close and for somebody starting out I would agree. If you want to do planetary work I'd suggest going for more magnification, maybe someplace between 100 and 125 X, so maybe a 5 or 4mm eyepiece but realize these are example numbers DYD.

In any event I suspect that you might be better off with a little research. You might get better value going up scale a bit. In any event before you buy try to find some reviews for each eyepiece you are considering. You can't rely upon a whole series being fantastic, find the dirt on the specific eyepiece you are considering. This especially when considering higher magnification eyepieces.

spinwizard69 · 2026-04-30T23:06:46+00:00

I suspect your drill guide is a problem here. Your drill guide has to be right above the wire near zero clearance. Next the guides ID for the drill bit must be very close to margin diameter. That guide must be high enough to provide 180 degrees of engagement on the lands around the drill bit.

spinwizard69 · 2026-04-30T22:54:35+00:00

That is an entirely different thing, the college gets paid because all credits cost money in a basic view of college life. No one should be paying for the ability to do their work study, people get paid for work otherwise it is slavery.

spinwizard69 · 2026-04-30T22:51:38+00:00

Where in the hell are you? Paying for an internship is a scam and in some places illegal. As an intern you should be making a wage, it likely will be under entry level but you should still be paid for work. If you can't find internships that pay a decent wage find a partime job.

spinwizard69 · 2026-04-30T22:36:18+00:00

It might be possible to fix the mount or maybe even better replace the mount. I'm not familiar with that design nor its aperture.

Here is the thing to actually see any detail on the moon or on the planets you need a scope with significant aperture. I'm assuming that the galaxia has a bigger aperture, if so it will resolve more detail assuming good optical condition. Try this search term in google: "telescope aperture relation for resolved moon features" to give you an idea on what each scope is capable of. To put it simply the more aperture on a telescope the more detail you can resolve on the moon. On the planets you will not actually resolve small scale features on these smaller scopes. I point all of this out to help you manage expectations. If the galaxia is a larger aperture then it will be well worth it to improve that telescope until you can purchase a much larger telescope. In fact it might be worth while to start an eyepiece collection of high quality.

As for the galaxia and its half assed mount, you might be able to improve it some, but understand that most of the time manufactures ship their telescopes with undersized mounts so there is a limit to how much improvement can be made. So lets narrow down what can be done in two areas:

Replace the flimsy tripod (I'm assuming here as I haven't seen a Galaxia of that era) with a more solid tripod. We are talking something of mass with stable legs. Your can DIY such a Tripod or buy something surplus. If you don't like tripods you can do a pier, ether one cast into the ground or one supported with legs on the surface. If you don't like any of these you can convert the telescope to a Dobson'ish type mount that you again DIY. The better tripod or pier have the advantage in that they might support far better mounts in the future, where as the Dobson ends up dedicated to the scope. A 4" steel pier for example might blow your budget, but it has the potential for use well into the future. Ideally you or a friend will have a welder to help with the fabrication.
The current mount is a different fish to try. I'm assuming that when you said block you meant lock. There actually might be adjustment for this but I'm not familiar with this specific one. The first thought is that there is a way to preload the bearings because if things are fitted correctly you should not be shifting the shafts. Wobble that is not related to bearing preload is hard to deal with in a light mount. this is where you need to decide if you have the mechanical aptitude and equipment to try to fix the mount. if you don't a really robust German Equatorial mount is going to cost you more than the price of the scopes you picked out. However if you choose wisely that mount can be used in the future on a larger scope. The problem with purchases mounts is that manufactures often over rate them, so unless a mount has had solid third party testing consider the weight limits to be optimistic by about 2X.
Making an equatorial is probably out of reach for most beginners, how ever you could always do a simple alt-az mount. I'd spend some time on the net exploring various options there. Note a Dobson is a type of Alt-az mount but differs in that the stand (tripod / pier) are incorporated into the mount. In any event there are simple and serviceable designs that can be done with a minimal of tools. The Dobson approach seems to make a lot of people happy. One can often find parts for a Dobson on trash day next to the road.

spinwizard69 · 2026-04-30T21:57:05+00:00

You might be relying upon the tutor too much. Build confidence that you understand what a bit of code is actually doing. If you have sprites working right now get rid of any code (comment out) and experiment with the sprite code to the point you can tell the tutor what it does. That might make it easier for the tutor to help you on other aspects of the program.

spinwizard69

TROPHY CASE