On Tue, Mar 18, 2025 at 06:26 AM, Mark Christensen wrote:
Paul,
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You may be right about the price difference going down but, frankly, I doubt it will: Absolute axis encoders are a niche within a niche.
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We always have to remember that the market for astronomy products at the consumer and educational (as opposed to research) end is only about $300M per year. That's nothing: A single 777 costs that much. And according to some market studies, nearly 50% of that market is controlled by one company now: Celestron. The point being that the chances of reaching economies of scale, which is what it would take to drop the price down, is very low.
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Other indicators of the small size of the market are that when Sky and Tel was sold it barely drew $3M. And it only took a $18M court judgement to kill Meade this last time and for Orion to buy them.
And then Orion went under. Numbers like $3M and $18M are peanuts.
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My hats really off to people like Losmandy, OpTech Inc, AstroPhysics, and Planewave for having the guts to set up businesses for such a small market composed all too often of nitpicky customers.
I continue to be amazed at how many people launch small companies in this market. We're all lucky they do.?They must really love what they are doing.
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Best regards,
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Mark C
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Mark,
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We already have cheap absolute encoders, we use them in many devices.? The problem is they are small and lack significant resolution, they are bit limited.? The cost of absolute encoders capable of the resolution, a minimum of 23 bits, and accuracy we need will never get that cheap, they are too hard to make.? I also think you are also right about the amateur astronomy market bing small.? I think it may get even smaller as people get squeezed financially, think tariffs, and the fact that cheap instant gratification seems to be what people want.?
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Nobody these days seems to appreciate the journey is at least half the fun of any hobby worth doing.??Not that there's anything wrong with that, I'm just saying.??
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I mean if I couldn't play with the mount control electronics on my workbench, buy and play with all the imaging gear, play with CAD prototyping and outputting to my DIY Trident 3-D printer, build editing computers for post capture processing etc. and the countless hours I spend on-line kvetching about it astronomy would be as frustrating and troublesome to me as it is to all the people who can't figure out why they don't see the pretty pictures on the box in the eyepiece of their shiney new $400 40mm telescope.? ? ? ?
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Chip Louie Chief Daydreamer Imagination Hardware?
Astrospheric Forecast - South Pasadena, CA?
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Chip Louie