Over the summer of 2023, I became very interested in amatuer astrophotography. From taking long-exposure images with my phone, I noticed some stars would become short lines after a 30 second exposure. When looking at the prices of currect Star Tracker mounts, I decided make my own to save some money and gain some experience with designing and building a solution.

In Fusion 360, I designed a system of gear reductions to greater reduce a DC motor’s speed so that a rotational rate of 2.5 degrees every ten minutues could be achieved to counter-act the Earth’s rotation. The electronics for this include a spare DC motor I had lying around, an Arduino Uno, and an L298N motor driver.

The mount was made with two methods, the main mounting plates were 3D-printed out of PLA, and the gears were printed in resin for the smoothness and accuracy resin printing brings. In the mounting plates, brass inserts were set to help mount everything to the plates, including the two electronic components.

I really enjoyed working on this project, as I got to use a new form of 3D printing I had not used before, and got to use brass inserts in 3D printed parts.