Starlight Xpress SX Universal filter wheel - Manual

Handbook for the SX Universal Filter Wheel - Issue 1, May 2009
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Handbook for the Starlight Xpress Universal Filter Wheel
Thank you for your purchase of a Starlight Xpress Universal Filter Wheel. We hope
that you will enjoy using this advanced SX unit, which offers many unique features.
This handbook will help you to put it into operation and to understand its capabilities.
Please read it carefully.
Description:
The SX Universal Filter Wheel has several important advantages over older and less
sophisticated designs:
1) The wheel uses an internal sub-miniature DC motor drive to turn the filter
plate. This consumes far less power than the more typical stepper motor and
allows wheel operation directly from the USB input, thus eliminating the
cumbersome power supply and extra power cable. The DC drive also produces
a quiet and vibration-free filter translation and eliminates a significant amount
of bulk and weight.
2) The filter locations are encoded by 3 Hall-effect magnetic sensors, which
permit up to 7 unique filter positions to be defined. The control software can
specify a particular filter without prior knowledge of the location of ‘position
1’ – so the filters can never get out of sequence. The lack of any infrared