SATRAN - Satellite Tracking Antenna

The latest Satran az/el antenna rotator for tracking satellites is a work of art. There are still some hurdles to overcome, mostly sourcing parts to bring the price down a bit for more to be able to enjoy it. But the creation I have developed over the last two and a half years is still very affordable, and a very giving project both to assemble and to boot up for some satellite communications. And now I finally have more kits in stock after a few months of RnD and production. Maybe the best christmas present ever?

www.satran.io/shop

The new design is finally finished and already sold out. More components are on its way so hopefully I can offer more stock in a few weeks. The new model can be 3D-printed and is mostly plastic, but I have a few metal accessories also in the shop that needs manufacturing. Like these antenna fasteners in cast aluminum. It's a lot of work to cast, cut, grind and drill. But it's well worth it to please my customers. 

It's official. Today I decided to move forward with Satran MK3, which is an easier and more open-source adaptation of the current MK2.

The electronics and motors will be the same as for the MK2, so it will be possible to build an MK3 from your old MK2 parts if you want to.

The current MK2 version was designed to be made completely out of cast alloy, which has shown to be extremely time-consuming and is not something my customers can make themselves. The current design takes almost 20 hours per unit for me to make, which is not something I can charge enough for. Hence, the new version will be designed so you can 3D-print the parts at home if you want instead of buying them. The new Satran will only be sold as parts or DIY kits, which mean I have time to make lots more of them and you as a customer will get a lower price and a few hours of fun assembling.

A more open-source design will also give more room to create your own upgrades or make your own spare parts with a standard 3D-printer at home if needed. Also the community can more easily help in inventing upgrades, improvements or software features.

Time for me to work around the clock, I hope to have the adjusted design ready in a week or two.

Production is taking me a lot of time. Especially the aluminum parts that I make from scratch, and then cut, drill, grind, sand-blast and paint. Its entertaining but extremely time consuming. 

The new electric furnace has almost doubled my productivity but it still takes maaany hours to make a single unit. I will probably need to clock all the different tasks in the next batch, so I can see where the bottlenecks are. But most importantly, the quality is getting better and better as I learn more about the process and produce better original patterns like the one below. Its a sheet of MDF with a 3D-printed pattern, coated with spray filler and epoxy paint. One part takes two of these, one positive and one negative. That means I have a total of 10 different molds, almost every one I have needed to redesign at least once. So only creating the patterns has taken me over a month of hard work and several hundred dollars.

The dream would be to just hire a firm to make die-cast parts instead of my sand-cast ones. But the setup fees for making the molds are insane and I'm not interested in taking an investor since its such a niche product and I have no idea how long I can be doing this. But hopefully I can make a few hundred units before I run out of juice.

Whats most important is that the quality has gotten significantly better since the very first prototype almost 2 years ago, and I have a few improvements left but mostly regarding the software and the app. Hopefully all of you - my customers - enjoy the enormous effort I put into making them. It's far from mass-produced.

Well, if at first you don't succeed....

The electric furnace that I built worked for some time, at least a few full days of foundry work. But the chamotte fire bricks took way too long to warm up, around 3 hours from turning it on until the aluminum was ready for pouring. 

So I decided to replace the fire bricks with a more advanced insulating brick, which I got to test yesterday. And it made a huge difference! The furnace reached the correct temperature in only 20 minutes, and in an extra 15-20mins the aluminum is ready. 

Also when I disassembled the furnace, I found that all the metal wire and parts that I had used to fasten the bricks and the kanthal-wire had gotten so oxidized that they just fell apart into powder. So now I replaced the cable joints with stainless ones, that hopefully will last a bit longer. Also the brick itself is insulating the furnace so the heat wont transfer out as much.

Now hopefully I can finish the last parts for the current batch of Satrans. Wohoo!

Finally Im getting somewhere with the first proper production run. After the initial zero series I had a few weeks downtime when building the electric furnace and better matchplates for the casting process, but now its all hands on deck to get a new batch ready in a week or two. 

Casting, drilling, grinding, blasting, painting. So much work, but way more fun than spending my time in an office...

Finally the furnace is working, reaching up to 800 celcius which is enough for melting aluminum. But I wish I used another kind of fire brick, because the chamotte-stones take a lot of energy to warm up. But I can replace them later. Now its time to produce some more Satrans... wohoo!

The first trial run of the electric smelting furnace did not work quite as I had hoped. After about an hour the heating element gave up. Apparently the connection between the kanthal-wire and the cable couldnt take the extreme heat.

This time I twisted the end of the kanthal resistance wire into sort of a "litz wire", and connected the heat-resistant cable with bolts and spacers. Hopefully this will prevent most of the heat to travel from the kanthal to the cable. 

Its not only a song by a local band called Melody Club, but "I'm electric" also states that the amazing and time-saving electric foundry is getting closer to completion.

I asked a good friend of mine to help me out in building a 2.1kW electric furnace instead of my currently horrendous wood-fired forge. Its a relatively easy setup but looks almost professional thanks to my friends excellent work.

The inside has a ceramic blanket surrounding a pile of chamotte-stones and a 12 meter long kanthal-wire turned into a spiral to give a nice 25ohm resistance, which in theory should give us 2100watt. Slightly below what my 10A outlets can handle. The bottom of the furnace is an old circular pizza oven stone that fit nicely inside the big steel bin.

I was up until late yesterday connecting all the wires, but for some reason the PID temperature controller didnt want to run on 12volt which the manual stated it would, so today I'll try 230vac instead and hope for better luck...

The first batch of Satrans are on their way to the very first customers and I am working hard to speed up production so even more can enjoy the tech. 

Sand casting has proven the greatest challenge which takes up a lot of production time. My first 3D-printed original patterns worked but were time-consuming and didnt last more than 10-20 uses. So this time I am trying something new - "cope and drag patterns". 

This is a two-part original made out of MDF-board, 3D-printed parts, glue, spray filler and a few coats of heat-tolerant epoxy paint on top. When you cast a lot the petrobond sand will get quite hot and can damage the patterns, so epoxy should give some extra protection. If they hold up for 50 uses or more I would be happy, otherwise I need to step up the game even further with fiberglass-patterns.