This is the start of my entrant in the Spark Fun Autonomous Vehicle Challenge for this year. It will be an Ardupilot powered Hexacopter with remote telemetry and wireless video.

My team is Cyberdyne Systems and this is Hexadrone Mk1. Should be fun.

Part one of the project back plate for 6 inch 6 jaw Set-Tru chuck

Here are a couple of prints I did this weekend on my Mosaic M2 3D printer. The first is the owl statue by Cushwa. And the second is the double twisted vase by FabLabZuidLimburg. There is no point to them they are going on my desk at work just for fun.

This is a project that has been a long time in the making. I have a small backyard observatory that I use primarily for astro photography. It is a skyshed pod . It is very similar to the HDPE plastic garden sheds you might get at Costco or Sam's club or some other warehouse club. It is about 7.5 feet in diameter.

When I first built the pod in 2009 I did not do a concrete pier for the telescope. Just didn't have the time or money at that point. So I used a tripod for a number of years. This is not ideal for a number of reasons. The tripod takes up a lot of floor space due to the legs and also if your trip over the legs your hard won careful alignment is likely to be effected. 

So I have been wanting a pier for some time. I had some contstruction workers over the house doing some other concrete work. I decided to ask them about the pier on a lark. They quoted me a reasonable price so I had them go ahead and do the work.

Then I needed an adapter plate to mount my Orion Atlas German equatorial telescope mount to the pier. I thought this would be a good CNC project. Here is what I came up with.