Recent journal entry:
A new journal entry from me, at last! There are quite some things that have been accumulated over the last 2 months.

1st of all I've enhanced my journal's appearence a little bit.
Please report any visual problems with resolutions between (and including) 1280 and 1024 (width)...I guess there are no people on dA who use lower resolutions, are there??!

2nd thing is about our band!!
We call ourselves "The Lost Notes" now. We got 1 hour of broadcasting time on a regionalradio channel for January...that means that we have to finish our first album until end of December. But that should be possible...
See some shots from a funny photoshooting below in the "Features Section".
Credits for taking the shots go out to Nina Stiller.



Our band page ist under construction!

3rd thing refers to the telescope-making infos I promised to provide. I will track the progress I make in building a tube for a 12 inch Newtonian (and after that maybe a mirror). Surely I will explain a little bit about all that stuff and I will list all the expenses for you and me to see what it costs to build such a thing.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask, although I've build just one tube before, I will be glad to answer them!

4th: I have a print account now, so prepare for some prints. Any suggestions for deviations you want me to upload as prints are highly appreciated, so if you want to have something as a print, feel free to tell me.



Coming up:
more studio macros, especially shots from minerals
Movie trailer collab, containing my 3D-Mountain fly-by animation!!
hopefully I'll submit some more digital drawings - I'm practicing...from time to time...
shots of some skaters I met, tried to freeze their jumps...but not totally
shots of water fountains - first experiences with freezing water in time
trying to go on with that 'The Day After' stuff
other Mojoworld scenes are waiting to be rendered - the beach I promised is nearly completed...
real 3D stuff using Maya

Legend: = work in progress; = could take a while; = currently frozen; = project canceled



Recent updates and prints:
-none-












This is an animation I made for the trailer of a movie, it's reduced in size (0.5x) and the compession is very strong (XviD quality 89) so the image quality is terrible...you need a DivX codec to run it but I'm sure you already have this ). Left or right click on the image to do whith the animation whatever your browser supports:







12 inch project:
This is a 3D-model of the desing I use for the tube, I will enhance this model while making progress whith the project:



I used a very similar design with the 8 inch tube. It's not optimal for bigger telescopes because the long main trusses are straight - if the whole tube was shaped more like a diamond, it would be more stable but it's very difficuld to build such constructions. It perfroms great in 8 inch size...let's see how it will perform in 12 inch size!



This is one of the long middle trusses. It's length is 1085 mm. I cut it manually with a deviation of +-0.25 mm using the tools you can see on the image, that requires some experience (especially to file the correct angle at the ends to achive this zigzag pattern you can see in the animation). Unfortunately I have no milling machine for that.
The material is aluminium, I cut it from a 2000 mm x 25 mm x 25 mm piece. the rest of each piece can be used in the future to cut the shorter trusses from it.
8 main trusses are needed, currently I have only 6 of them.



This is the drill I'll use to drill precisely...it's a very cheap one (about 43 $), but it's sufficient. Using a vice is a great help.

Material listing:
6x 25 mm x 25 mm x 2000 mm aluminium pipes.................................about 124 $
screws with nuts (100x), M5x40 mm..............................................................11 $
[these small metal discs which are to put between screw and truss] (250x)...7 $



8 inch project:
I'll cover the grinding of a mirror later when the 8 inch mirror is finished and I'm going to grind the 12 inch mirror. For now, I give just short updates about the status of my 8 inch Newtonian and the mirror which I'm working on at the moment.



This is the wannabe mirror for my 8 inch newtonian. To the left you can see the tool which is for grindidng it. Yes, ist made out of ceramic tiles and moltofill. However, it sucks...for the 12 inch mirror I will use a granite plate, this should be less complicated and there are less mistakes to make.
Belive me, with this ugly "rock" you can grind a mirror perfectly down to an acurracy of 5 µm - when using the right technique of course . When you use it for polishing after grinding, it goes down to a few nm.



...and if you wonder why I don't submit any new astroshots...this is the reason!!
I screwed up spraying it black because I skipped to undercoat the colour...dammit, thats the price for my ignorance, half of the colour fell off after a few days as if it never touched the metal and the other half adheres so strongly that I have problems brushing it off with a wire brush. Any ideas how to get it off without detaching the tube are HIGHLY appreciated!