Orion 100ED Souped Up

[andeelym]

Do you need to dismantle the scope for the powder-coating?

Is it mandatory to remove existing paint for the shop to powder-coat?

[Gary]

Beautiful powder coating! Thanks for sharing your source for the job.

[orly_andico]

Yes I dismantled the scope - unscrewed the dew shield from the cell, unscrewed the cell from the OTA body, and removed the focuser (3 screws). So the only thing I brought to Defu Lane was the dew shield and tube.

Actually you want to keep the lens and cell because you don't want hard baked plastic on your lens!

Also the Orion 100ED has a pathetic focuser, which is why I replaced it with a WO focuser, so I needed to remove it anyway.

David said he would sandblast it anyway so removing existing paint is not mandatory. This is also what the VRZone folks said. But I sanded it (had lots of free time on my hands) because my original plan was to paint it myself with Hammerite.

I got as far as painting the dew shield (see my original post where you can see the painted dewshield and unpainted tube) but the finish was no good. Hammerite is extremely tough paint, even with paint remover it took me an afternoon to get the paint off.

[andeelym]

Oh he will sandblast it too? All for S$15?

[orly_andico]

Oh he will sandblast it too? All for S$15?

Heh. No idea. Maybe he didn't sand blast it anymore hence he only charged me $15.

Do note that a good part of the cost is the area to cover. So if your scope is bigger diameter hence more surface area, it will require more powder and more labour.

BTW this is the name of the shop

http://www.streetdirectory.com/business ... chid=98879

it is literally a hole in the wall (the shop door wasn't even fully open when I went there).

[andeelym]

Last question, how long did it take?

[orly_andico]

In my case 1 day.

The VRZone case modders say 2-3 days, but maybe that's because PC cases are more complicated.