The QHYCCD FY3 Filter Wheel is the company’s third generation filter wheel offering a new ultra-thin stepper motor drive and fully automatic filter switching.
Instead of incorporating a PM stepper motor used in many filter wheels, the QHYCCD FY3 filter wheel hybrid stepper motor offers higher precision and a smaller step angle. The motor is enclosed to prevent dust from entering the motor, thus improving reliability and motor life. The direction of filter rotation can be reversed as the filter carousel can be rotated clockwise or counterclockwise to conveniently and quickly complete the rotation.
The QHYCCD FY3 filter wheel also offers improvements over QHYCCD’s previous generation filter wheel by replacing the gear drive with a friction drive that results in zero backlash during operation.
A specially designed filter carousel allows the installation of unmounted filters of different thicknesses. Mounted filters below 10 mm thick can be installed and unmounted filters of different thicknesses can also be mounted on the same filter disc. This means that filter positioning is more precise and faster.
Other features of the FY3 include:
– A serial port switch which can accommodate fast switching between serial communication mode and USB communication mode.
– The filter wheel supports the QHY 4-pin connection control mode.
– The firmware is open source and compatible with Arduino.
– The design is compatible with the QHY-OAG (off-axis guide) for the corresponding size.
– The main body is cut from a single piece of aluminum by a precision CNC machine.
There are four versions of the QHYCFW3 filter wheel: QHYCFW3XL (extra-large size), QHYCFW3L (large size), QHYCFW3M (medium size), and QHYCFW3S (small size). Both the QHYCFW3M and QHYCFW3S are also available in a standard version (-SR) and thin version (-US).
The QHYCFW3S supports a carousel holding seven 1.25-inch mounted filters or a carousel holding six 36-mm unmounted filters. The thin version of the QHYCFW3 is 15.5mm thick and the standard version is 20.5mm thick.
The QHYCFW3M supports a carousel holding five 2-inch mounted or 50-mm unmounted filters or a carousel holding seven 36-mm unmounted filters. The thin version of this filter wheel is 17.5mm thick and the standard version is 21.5mm thick.
The QHYCFW3L supports a carousel holding seven 2-inch mounted or 50-mm unmounted filters. The QHYCFW3XL supports a carousel holding nine 2-inch mounted or 50-mm unmounted filters, or a carousel holding seven 50-mm square unmounted filters.
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