The Astrolabe Project

I received a nice email from a user in Argentina, and he has given permission to post some of his photos and notes on how he achieved the lovely result.
“I started generating the EPS files with your software for my southern latitude, and then added some more stars to the rete and a clever-but-mostly-useless device to the sun eccentric in the back, for the leap years.

I then had it laser-cut and engraved on a plastic material we call Metalex here in Argentina, which has a black PVC base with a shiny metallic layer on one of its faces, thin enough to be cut with the laser. In order to give it more weight I laser-cut the same shape on 3 millimeter wood – minus the engraving – and glued the metalex cut-out on it.

Since I wanted the rete and the front ruler to remain thin to avoid parallax (and for better looks), I left them as they were, just the metalex sheet without the wood. And to avoid wear to the thin metallic layer I backed all moving parts with a special paper I found, which has a soft velvety lining on one of its faces. For my next project I’ll probably have it laser-cut to the same shape too.”