From: Milton Aupperle <milton@outcastsoft.com>
Date: September 8, 2006 12:33:59 PM MDT
To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] Flea a year old now
Hi Tim;
On 8-Sep-06, at 12:00 PM, Tim wrote:
Milton:
Well, my Color Flea is now about a year old, so it's out of warranty
and I'm considering removing the internal IR blocking filter and using
a screw-in IR blocker that doesn't cut so much visible light as the
blue-tinted built in filter does.
The only issue you will have is that the CCD is going to be exposed to dust, fingers etc. You might want to get a plain glass filter to replace it with to avoid that problem.
I remember you said it wasn't difficult to do when you removed yours.
Nope it's pretty easy to do, just take your time (about 30 minutes the first time) and don't be in a rush.
you might also want to look at my Peltier Cooler design too.
http://www.outcastsoft.com/AstroImages/Cheap_Peltier_Camera_Cooler_MJA.pdf
Any pointers? Things to be wary of?
Here's my notes on the subject. This was after I removed the outside metal case.
The hardest part was finding a hexagonal L wrench small enough (it was either a 1.0 or a 0.75 mmm size) to fit in the 4 bolts. After that, removing the last board against the camera mount plate was a bit scary, because it seemed like it was epoxied together, but in fact there are 2 hidden pins that hold them together. A bit of slow gentle prying with a jeweler flat head screwdriver and I got the mount plate and last board separated without any damage. It required some force to pop out the original filter too.. It took about 30 minutes start to finnish to do it and once I know what I'm doing it probably would only take 5 to 10 minutes now.
PS:
I also did this on another manufacturers (not PGR or TIS thank goodness) 1280x1024 Format 7 color camera this week. For some completely idiotic reason the IR filter the company used used has a "frosting" / Diffusion pattern on it. That's "okay" (well not really) if your just using it for with a short focal length lens for Machine Vision, but when you have long focal length nearly parallel light then the frosting pattern projects right onto the CCD and shows up as a billion little shadow donuts. Once I replaced it with a 15x15 mm Edmund IR blocking Filter, it's fine but gack - have these guys never used it on a telescope / microscope before?
HTH..
Milton J. Aupperle
President
ASC - Aupperle Services and Contracting
Mac Software (Drivers, Components and Application) Specialist
#1005 - 815 14th Avenue. S.W.
Calgary Alberta Canada T2R0N5
1-(403)-229-9456
www.outcastsoft.com