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DISH SETUP: Single sat, Multi-Sat & Motorised
Satellite Meters and Installation Equipment
How to calculate depth of satellite dish?
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<blockquote data-quote="vma" data-source="post: 1074283" data-attributes="member: 256592"><p>Hi,</p><p></p><p>A dish is calculated so that the focal distance is compatible with the beam angle on the LNB feedhorn.</p><p></p><p>The curvature of the dish is calculated like this:</p><p></p><p>z = (x ^ 2 + y ^ 2) / (4 * fd)</p><p></p><p>Where X, Y and Z are the 3D coordinates of the dish surface (a parabolic shape) and FD is the feed distance.</p><p></p><p>If you want to increase the size of your dish, that would be easy on a prime focus dish, as you would have to just "continue" the curvature of the existing shape in a tangent manner.</p><p></p><p>But if you have an offset dish, that won't be that easy, because all around the dish you will have different curvatures. An offset dish is actually a cutted shape from a bigger parabolic 3D surface! Imagine taking a sphere and cutting it at an angle with a plane. The resulting "slice" would be your offset dish.</p><p></p><p>The dish is, however, not a perfect sphere, because it would be too big (in Z - think of "too fat"). This is why one uses a parabolic shape, which gets you a big diameter on a relatively flat dish.</p><p></p><p>The magic of geometry is that no matter where the beam hits the parabolic surface, it will always be reflected to the focus - the LNB. But the even greater magic is that the distance of each beam to the surface of the dish and then reflected to the LNB will always be the same, which is why the signal is in phase!</p><p></p><p>If you try to increase the surface of your dish by adding to it on the borders, chances are you will get the wrong deometry and the reflected beams will either be off from the LNB or, if they do hit the LNB, they will be out of phase and as a result you will have a worse reception.</p><p></p><p>Building big size dishes is actually quite expensive and complex due to the fact that the sheet metal suffers both a plastic and an elastic deformation inside the press tool. The elastic deformation causes the dish to spring back when extracted from the press tool - the geometry will be wrong.</p><p></p><p>A good (and expensive) dish will be produced by trial and error on the press tool, so that the shape of the press tool is exagerated in order to compensate for the elastic deformation. Or, expensive simulation software is used to calculate the theoretic shape.</p><p></p><p>Using the above formula I wrote many years a go an application to automatically calculate the 3D surface of an offset dish. You only had to input the desired dish size and the tool would calculate and create the surface on the attached CAD software. This was developed for a dish manufacturer.</p><p></p><p>Regards,</p><p>Vitor</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="vma, post: 1074283, member: 256592"] Hi, A dish is calculated so that the focal distance is compatible with the beam angle on the LNB feedhorn. The curvature of the dish is calculated like this: z = (x ^ 2 + y ^ 2) / (4 * fd) Where X, Y and Z are the 3D coordinates of the dish surface (a parabolic shape) and FD is the feed distance. If you want to increase the size of your dish, that would be easy on a prime focus dish, as you would have to just "continue" the curvature of the existing shape in a tangent manner. But if you have an offset dish, that won't be that easy, because all around the dish you will have different curvatures. An offset dish is actually a cutted shape from a bigger parabolic 3D surface! Imagine taking a sphere and cutting it at an angle with a plane. The resulting "slice" would be your offset dish. The dish is, however, not a perfect sphere, because it would be too big (in Z - think of "too fat"). This is why one uses a parabolic shape, which gets you a big diameter on a relatively flat dish. The magic of geometry is that no matter where the beam hits the parabolic surface, it will always be reflected to the focus - the LNB. But the even greater magic is that the distance of each beam to the surface of the dish and then reflected to the LNB will always be the same, which is why the signal is in phase! If you try to increase the surface of your dish by adding to it on the borders, chances are you will get the wrong deometry and the reflected beams will either be off from the LNB or, if they do hit the LNB, they will be out of phase and as a result you will have a worse reception. Building big size dishes is actually quite expensive and complex due to the fact that the sheet metal suffers both a plastic and an elastic deformation inside the press tool. The elastic deformation causes the dish to spring back when extracted from the press tool - the geometry will be wrong. A good (and expensive) dish will be produced by trial and error on the press tool, so that the shape of the press tool is exagerated in order to compensate for the elastic deformation. Or, expensive simulation software is used to calculate the theoretic shape. Using the above formula I wrote many years a go an application to automatically calculate the 3D surface of an offset dish. You only had to input the desired dish size and the tool would calculate and create the surface on the attached CAD software. This was developed for a dish manufacturer. Regards, Vitor [/QUOTE]
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DISH SETUP: Single sat, Multi-Sat & Motorised
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How to calculate depth of satellite dish?
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