After many hours of designing, printing, assembling and optimizing, my little mini dome has been in operation since the summer 2022. The dome has a diameter of about 50 cm. It is equipped with a Skywatcher AZ-GTi Goto mount, cooled ASI183MC camera, a Samyang 1.4/85mm lens, EAF focuser and ASI120MM camera with 130mm mini telescope for tracking. Two small motors can open and close the dome via a cable pull. An Arduino processor closes it automatically when the nightly photo session is finished. It also measures the temperature, humidity, rain and cloud cover.
The dome is mounted on a sturdy plastic base plate, which is screwed to the garage roof. As it would certainly not withstand heavy weather, a cover can be moored over it if required.
My little 3D Prusa Mini printer took about 250 hours in total to make the 64 or so parts. That’s about 4.5 kg of PETG plastic. Printing one of the largest parts (left picture) took about 12 hours.
The larger parts deformed slightly during printing. To correct this, the individual glued parts were screwed together, filled, sanded and painted. The first version of the dome roof shell did not feel stable enough. For this reason, a second complete half was fitted as an additional shell over the first, so that the seams overlap and are screwed together.