Thanks for the comments, guys.

Bruce

Hi William,

I have just seen your second reply which must have come in as I was typing!

Again, thank you for the additional well thought out instructions. I will be going with the faster direct fill method but am grateful for the advice regarding using a cloth as a dust filter during the filling process - this is a very good idea as, of course, the gas movement could introduce unwanted dust into the chamber which would not be good.

As I suspected, this will be like a military operation with careful planning and all the necessary tools available in the right place!

Best wishes,

Steve

Hi William,

Great to hear from you again and thank you for the very prompt reply. All is good here although I have been tearing my hair out over the atrocious sky conditions we have had this year which has resulted in very little imaging activity on my part!

I am indeed hoping to remove the filter membrane to make it easier to carry out an Argon purge. Thank you for your comprehensive instructions regarding removal of the membrane - very useful information indeed - I was concerned about damaging it if it required a specialist tool or something to remove it but I can do this carefully so all should be well.

I have already done a desiccant bake before and noticed that very slim rubber 'O' ring and removed it prior to baking, thank goodness. I was also very careful last time to leave the oven running for a good while prior to placing the plug inside it just as a precaution but your reminder is a timely one - if I see any smoke, I will abort the mission!

Hopefully, all will be well when I do this in the next day or so.

Thanks again, William, I'll let you know how I get on.

Best wishes,

Steve
www.nightskyimages.co.uk

Steve.

I just realised that I did not fully answer your question.

If you want to fast-fill the the chamber with Argon then you will need to lift the filter membrane, which will allow you to feed in a trickle of Argon to the chamber via a typical hobby TIG/MIG welder 4mm diameter regulator hose (for use with disposable Argon cylinders and regulators).

Use a dust-free lens cleaner cloth, or something of equivalent quality, wrapped lightly around the hose to cover the desiccant port as you fill the chamber and help prevent dust being drawn inside the chamber as you fill it with Argon.

Do not use the cloth as a “plug” though, you don’t want to raise the pressure inside the chamber as you fill with Argon or you risk bursting the sensor cover glass or camera window, the cloth is just used as a cover while you fill.

You do need to work in clean surroundings and use a very slow flow-rate to avoid blowing or drawing dust into the chamber with the filter removed. You can carry out the whole process in just a few minutes.

Trying to tip or pour Argon over the desiccant port with the filter still in place will have no effect, the filter is too dense to allow sufficient gas to enter the chamber.

An alternative method is a slow exchange purge.

Place the whole camera body with the desiccant plug removed, but the dust membrane filter left in place, inside a goldfish bowl, or similar container, with the desiccant port uppermost and the camera sensor window pointing downwards, and with a large fresh desiccant pouch (of the type used for keeping cars and motorhomes dry in storage) added to the bowl with the camera, cover the bowl with kitchen cling-film or a large rubber party balloon stretched over the container opening.

Lift an edge of the cling-film, or rubber ballon, and slowly fill the container with Argon, trickled in via the TIG/MIG Argon regulator hose from the bottom of the container, for about five-ten minutes, to replace (as much as possible) the air inside the container with Argon. Reseal the container and place it somewhere warm for a minimum seven days.

The heavy Argon will slowly permeate through the filter membrane to replace the lighter damp air inside the sensor chamber, driving it out, and any moisture in the expelled air will be absorbed by the desiccant pouch.

It’s not such an efficient method as lifting the filter membrane and feeding in Argon direct via a hose, and the exchange of damp air for dry Argon in the chamber will not be 100%, but it does have the advantage of preventing dust entering the chamber.

I’ve purged all three of my QSI cameras twice each in the last twelve years by lifting the filter membrane and feeding in Argon direct via a 4mm hose and TIG/MIG regulator from a hobby welder and never had dust enter the chamber but I have taken care to do this in the observatory after a spell of rainy weather when the airborne dust and pollen levels are low, I might think twice about trying the direct fill method inside my home or workshop where airborne dust levels are always much higher.

HTH

William.

Hello Steve.

Good to hear from you, hope all is well?

Presumably you’re trying to remove the filter membrane to make it easier to carry out an Argon purge?

The red rubber ‘O’ ring holding the dust filter membrane into the recess can be teased out of the body with e.g., a miniature, blunt, fine-blade, such as a jewellers screwdriver, or similar, and a pair of tweezers. It’s just a regular “O” ring pressed into the recess without any adhesives, after which the filter membrane below should just fall out of the body if you invert the camera but may need a little help with the aid of a fine sewing needle or pin to lift an edge.

The membrane is very thin and fragile and needs handling carefully so not to tear or crease it.

Remember to remove the black “O” ring from the desiccant plug before baking and if possible replace it with a new one before refitting the plug as it will have become rather squashed and flattened after many years of compression and may not reseal the plug as well as it once did when new.

Last tip, if your oven has catalytic self-clean linings it’s unlikely to have been used at a high enough temperature to start the catalytic process for many years and the oven linings might be hiding a lot of un-catalysed, soaked-in cooking fat or oil spatter, which will vaporise and contaminate the desiccant plug as soon as you try to bake the plug at the temperature recommended in the QSI manual.

If you do have such an oven with catalytic linings then run the oven empty at maximum temperature for an hour to initiate the catalytic process and burn off any grease/oil before reducing the temperature to the advised setting in the QSI manual and baking the plug. If the oven still emits clouds of smoke when the oven-door is opened when at the required temperature for baking the QSI plug then the oven linings are still too dirty and you can ruin the desiccant plug by oil vapour contamination if you try to bake the plug in such conditions.

William.

Hi Folks,

r_kunert

?

Place the desiccant canister in the 500°F oven for 4 to 5 hours. This will drive out the accumulated water molecules, recharging the desiccant.?

?

Let it cool, place back into chamber then use the below gas to fill the chamber, use it slowly and over do it to ensure that you fill the chamber. The argon will displace the atmosphere in the chamber.

Sorry to re-open and old thread but from what I can see after removal of the micro-sieve desiccant plug, there is a filter of some kind that stops access to the sensor chamber. Is this safe to remove and how would you recommend doing it??

Any advice would be very much appreciated - thanks!



Regards,

Steve
www.nightskyimages.co.uk

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Bruce,

This is an image of NGC 604, a bright emission nebula in a spiral arm of M33.? M33 is located about 2.7 M-ly away and is one of the three large spiral galaxies in the local group, somewhat further away than the Andromeda galaxy. The nebula is so bright that it was discovered by William Herschel in 1784, long before the nature and distance of spiral galaxies was understood.? The nebula is about 40 times larger than the visible part of the Orion nebula and is 6300 times more luminous.? If the two were located at the same distance as the Orion nebula, NGC 604 would be brighter than Venus in the nighttime sky.? The nebula? is only 3.5M years old and is powered by a cluster of 200 hot young stars having a mass of 100K solar masses. (Ref. Wikipedia).? The image was captured during 4 nights in October 2023 under fair conditions using a 12.5" PlaneWave scope and a QSI-640ws camera at f/8 for a final HaLRGB integration of 16.5 hours.



Thanks for looking.
Bruce W.

thank you david
i'll try that, have already tried a different chord

Thanks for all the nice comments, guys.

Bruce W.

Wow, that's cool !!!!!

Hi, Bruce,

Yes this is a particularly gorgeous grouping, and you have certainly done it justice! I imaged it several years ago, and it is my computer wallpaper :-) But my UK skies can't hope to match SkyPi, so not the fine detail you have obtained. Well done, and thank you for sharing.

Cheers,

Peter

PS My web site is down, has been for a couple of weeks, so I can't point you at my humble effort.


Approx. 55 deg N, 2 deg W (Northumberland, UK)

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Beauty! Adding to my things to image list!

Pete

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very nice

This is an image of the NGC 80 galaxy group in Andromeda which has 13 confirmed members at an approximate distance of 260M light-years. NGC 80 is the large, bright lenticular galaxy to the upper right and is the “lead” member of the group based on its size and brightness. The lenticular galaxy to its lower-left has some unusual shell/disk structures of dust and gas. The two most striking galaxies below center are undergoing tidal interaction - NGC 90 is the distorted blue spiral galaxy and NGC 93 is the reddish, dusty spiral galaxy below it.? The image was captured during 3 nights in October 2023 under average conditions using a 12.5" PlaneWave scope and a QSI-640ws camera at f/8 for a final LRGB integration of 20 hours.



Thanks for looking,
Bruce W.

Try some contact cleaner. These connections were designed for inside use. I’m amazed they do as well as they do. If that works, then apply some contact lubricant. Use the stuff that puts a single molecule thick lubricant on the connectors, I would not use the one that puts a thick layer of grease like goop on the contacts. The lubricant will keep the contacts from wearing.

The US military had a problem with their fighters early in the Gulf War, specifically it was the avionics contacts. They started applying a contact cleaner/lubricant and the problems largely went away. If you look you can probably find the stuff they used identified by a Milspec number. It was expensive and available in fairly large containers. There was a fellow on eBay that bought some and then sold it in little bottles. An ounce was a lifetime supply. I haven’t seen it in years, but that’s where I got mine. Anyway I put it on all my camera connections, USB connections, and inside the computer on all the connections inside. My equipment is remotely placed and has been for years without connection problems.

The fact that you have an intermittent connection and that is worsening makes me think the contacts are suspect. If that fails, I’d replace the cord.

Good luck.

My 660wsg has functioned flawlessly since 2014. I use it with maxil d.6.28
I'm starting to get messages can't open camera. The usb plug and socket seems ok on inspection, but sometimes I can get it to function by removing and reinserting the plug in the camera, but with increasing rarity. Change of USB cable does not seem to help. Any suggestions. Is a new socket a spare part that is obtainable? Could it be a software problem?

Morten