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TECH2000 news releases... |
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Sep '02: The ASM equipment is proving to be slow to get, after we have been placing orders and receiving parts or completed product around 4-6 months later. Andre says that the quality is worth the wait and customers understand this. I know this to be true and I am convinced that his optics are La'Superba by my experience and I can't buy the equivalent from Zambuto since he is locked-up contractually - but why can't we get the product from ASM-Canada stock? After all we are the exclusive USA distributor! Answer - there is no stock there! Paul suggests Discovery as an option for us to configure drives direct from factory with shorter waits on finished telescopes and we will evaluate that for our stock. Aug '02: Still working on the drop-in complete drive solution for Starsplitters and Discovery - one is running in CA near the Starsplitter factory. Jul '02: Time to find a refractor company that yields a "big-bang for the buck" as befits Giro mount heads for compactness and light weight and our no-align and goto abilities. Looking into Sky-Vue products for the solution to this because the GiroDrive sales are picking up briskly since users are giving very good accolades in user reports. Feb '02: Major changes are underway for this site after we made the move to support small to mid-size refractor goto mounts (Giro), and as well when we became the exclusive distributor in the USA for the Canadian ASM ceramic-mirror Dobs. Any feedback or desired info that you think we should present in some way should be communicated to our prime email link from the homepage. Feb '02 for 'big-boy' equatorial designers: "Powermax" complete kit is back now and is available for the larger equatorials or special customizing applications on research grade altaz for 8 times the power on these big mounts seeking high performance for large-apertures. Typical yield is 8k steps/Sec and 16 oz-in torque at the motorshaft prior to the geardown elements (which we supply in the case of mounts with worm-gears on the main axes). Result is 800 oz-in or less at the wormshaft depending on the instrument goals. Massive 12" refractors can be readily driven by this as well as the 6" top-performers. These are almost exclusively used for the big equatorials that need >60 oz-in torque at the wormshafts (which is our commonly-avilable DDR2-ATM) with aperture resolutions from .01 to 1 arcsec Dawes. Note- Dobs and other altaz mountings should try to use the existing systems depicted on this site whenever possible since the Powermax will require custom engineering by the user or by Tech 2000 and will cost many times the ready-to-go systems due to the research grade nature. -DM Feb '02: added laser page, Giro page, Dob-Driver functions descrip. page, new full-astrophoto page for Dobs, and a raft of new links to related sites. -DM Current Dob-Driver ROM version now shipping is V2.1. Changes from 2.0 are simply for 16 microstep vs. the prior 8 microstep pattern. Most useful on the larger 100LB+ Dob mounts. -DM Systems up to 500 Ft-LBS !! of torque per axis have been implemented. Kennedy Space Center is running 2 Dob-Drivers on large parabolic dishes. The Hale-Bopp comet was discovered with the assistance of a Dob-Driver II! Roboscope software for PC link contains entire NGC, IC, Messier, King, Caldwell, & user catalogs... well over 13,000 objects w/ descriptive info for each... a lifetime of observing! All Ra/Dec coordinates entered by user are also valid and the telescope will advise if below horizon. With floppy, custom catalogs or special sky-tours created by the user are unlimited in quantity of catalogs, each catalog may contain up to 100 objects. If using only hard drives with the telescope, each User catalog must be held in a separate folder or directory - still unlimited User catalogs are the result. New custom-wound motors are now standard on Dob-Driver equipment. The resolution |
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TECH2000, 69 Ridge St. South, Monroeville, OH 44847 |
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