29. History

During the AAVSO meeting in Flagstaff, AZ. 16-17 November 2018 – Cary Chleborad, Eric Dose, Wayne Green, Michael Lundquist, Tony Rodda Forrest Sims took an interest into Tony’s 3D printing of a spectrograph.

The Sacramento Mountian Spectroscopy Workshop II, held in Las Curzes NM on 22-24 February, 2019. At the meeting, Jerry Foote, Wayne Green, Michael Lundquist, Forrest Sims, Tom Smith agreed it was time to print the Lowspec improve things. Clarke Yeager and Greg Jones joined later.

To this end, the FlexSpec-1 was born.

We started with first principles and have redesigned several aspects of current small spectroscope offerings. We are using the counterposing aspects of a aluminum/steel chassis to fix flexure, opacity and thermal expansion. 3D printing has proved viable for the comparatively tiny components supporting the optics within this chassis. Our software deployment does not require end-user installation of any programs. Operations are possible from anywhere in netdom. We are rather proud of our guide improvements, Fraunhofer baffle, focusable collimator, Kzin ring calibration and general automation.

A complete discussion of the work may be found in the Proceedings of the Society for Astronomical Sciences, 2020, 2021 and 2022. Publications and Videos .