BUD and Dish Flop

[zayden]

My bud currently goes down to 47.5w but would like to get down to 40.5w (or beyond ) but am afraid of dish flop.

The actuator is 24" and the dish goes up to 139w. I know there's room because i run the screw in all the way for maintenance which sends it quite a bit further but I don't have an L bracket nor do I weld. Is there nothing holding the screw in the actuator at the end-of-travel ?

[edrik]

typically, there is a switch internal that cuts out the power when at max travel.
if it didnt , you would jam the gears and possibly ruin it. i do believe most to have a positive stop..
either way, you dont want to run all the way in either direction....

[zayden]

Interesting. So besides the softwaer stop inside the receiver and the programmed stop inside my VBox there is a third stop inside the actuator itself ? Lol you must be right about it being critical to not run it out fully.

Going to search here for that L bracket some people have used.

By the way when I was setting up this dish my gut told me to put the actuator on the other side but everything I read told me to put it where it is. I think following my gut may have been better and that may in the end be the easiest solution.

[ro_54]

yes, every actuator has a mechanical limit switch inside, but the weigh of the dish my overpower the actuator.
i have a 24" venture, witch is not being overpowered by the dish, but to make sure, i installed a stopper on the dish itself & an homemade extension plate to go from 27w to 139w. (see att)

[zayden]

Very cool. I'm going to have a closer look at my dish tomorrow to see what's involved in making those mods.

[Terryl]

Another way to stop the dish from going past the outer limit of the motor (fully extended) and flopping over is to install a ground stop.

This can be a simple pressure treated 4x4 in-bedded in concrete like a post for a fence, the height and position is found by moving the dish as far as you need till your at the limit of your satellites in that direction, then a string line is dropped from the edge of the dish and a post hole is dug at that point,(about 24 inches or so deep) the height for the post is measured from the ground up, the post is embedded and you wait for the concrete to set, you then cut the post to the correct height.

This is an ultimate hard stop.

[jvvh5897]

Yikes! I would hate to have a motor tear itself up on something that I put in the ground.

[Terryl]

Most of the motor's I know of have a clutch, it will quit turning the gears if it hit something hard, he just wants to keep the dish from flopping past the soft stops, it would be the same this as the brackets on the dish that RO_54 is using.

And there would be a bit of flexing of the dish out at the rim, so it would not be that hard of a stop.

It would however be better to use the internal motor settings for the MAX East/West limits, this cuts the DC power to the motor.

Another way was to use a chain with a spring snubber, this allowed for some flexibility, the chain was mounted on the other side of the dish, the spring has heavy enough to stop the dish without a sudden jerk, the other end of the chain was to a hard point in the ground.

[zayden]

Well I missed the obvious. In order to get a few more degrees of the arc I merely loosened the clamp on the actuator and slid it forward until I hit my first sat. The dish now turns that extra distance.

Now the VBox has a "shift" feature that in theory moves each stored sat in memory the same distance to account for the new actuator "home" position. I found it not to work too well. I wonder if the relationship between actuator travel and arc travel is not linear ?

[outtyrox]

I get from 43.5w to 117w before I get dish flop with 24" actuator.

I had to set the hardware limits because once it got a little past 117w it'd flop. I got the actuator on the left.

I'm going back to a 36" soon to get to 125w and 127w. should have enough to get all the way to 139w also with the 36" actuator.

I found the shift not to work on the VBOX II I have also.