Chris,
Maybe we just need to build a coating system to be shared by all of us on the big island? I saw the posts quote from $8000 up to tens of thousands for the needed equipment. Maybe if we look around for cheap components and share the costs and do the work, we could really do this for a reasonable cost to each? I would be willing to chip in a grand or so myself.
Mike
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--- In VacuumX@..., "Christopher Erickson" <christopher.k.erickson@...> wrote:
I have been doing the numbers and trying to decide if I
want to build a 1.3 meter coating chamber here on the Big
Island.
Doing the financial math, a 1.3M chamber appears to only
be about 40% more expensive than building a .5M chamber
and would be quite a bit more versatile.
The only real problem is whether or not people would be
willing to pay to ship their heavy, bulky 1M mirrors to
Hawaii to be coated.
On a related note, if anyone has any spare vacuum
hardware/instrumentation suitable for a 1.3M chamber
that they are interested in selling at reasonable
prices, I am interested to hear about it.
In discussions with some of my buddies with engineering
day jobs at the observatories, I am tempted to try some
silver coatings as well as aluminum.
I am also interested in getting into overcoatings once
I have aluminizing and silvering down to a nicely
repeatable science.
Given your corrosive vog challenges and need for
frequent coatings anyway, maybe switching to silvering
might be an option for better optical performance
between recoatings.
Of course all of this means you are going to have to
quit trying to claim that HOVE is astronomically
superior to Waikoloa Village here on the island...
(grin)
