I would like to ask if it possible to drive a dish (let’s say 3m) with the SatNOGS’ rotator? I’ve checked out several topics about dishes here and found that a member could attach a dish to a regular SatNOGS rotator but he was saying it is at the upper limit the rotator could carry. Some others were using commercial rotarors.
What it takes to turn the rotator into a stronger one? Would just using stronger rotors with all parts aluminium (not 3d printed) suffice to carry heavier antennas or do we need a complete redesign? In either case I think it would be way cheaper than the commercial ones, at least, I hope so.
I think that the bigger issue with SatNOGS rotaror as is at this time is the plastic gears. This is the weakest link in the transmission chain, and this is proven also by tests. Changing this with something more robust, and by taking advantage of the modularity of the rotator and putting it in X-Y setup and not in AZ-EL, it will also give you the needed speed at the zenith (zenith is an singularity point for the AZ-EL rotators)
