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Antenna Mount Re-designed

A project log for Satellite Antenna Rotator Mechanical System

This is the Satellite Antenna Rotator mechanical system for my step motor driver board project.

bharbourBharbour 08/07/2016 at 17:350 Comments

While testing the rotator outside with an antenna mounted and cabled, the performance of the original antenna mount was just not acceptable. The original implementation used a pair of screw hose clamps, clamping the foam rubber grip on the antenna shaft into an L shaped bracket. It was not possible to tighten the hose clamps enough to prevent the antenna from drooping, causing a variable elevation pointing error. I want the antenna shaft electrically isolated from the rotator chasis.

I removed the foam handle grip from the antenna shaft, and machined a clamp from a piece of ABS plastic bar stock that is tightened to the existing L shaped bracket with wing nuts. The new clamp works very well.

The shaft for the theta axis inside the 1" square tube, is a piece of 1/4" steel drill rod. It is not stiff enough in the space between the final fixed bearing and the antenna mount bracket, resulting in a little too much flexing. Re-designing this is going to be a bigger job than the mount clamp. A task for another weekend or 3.

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