Hi Leo, thanks for your feedback. Yes, I frequently use sealed food containers from Dollar store as a project box. They are cheap and easy to cut out using heated knife/soldering iron. And if the project fails, nothing much to loose
Once, I too had a similar idea of using two different spider vanes as conductors, but then it requires to add insulators as well, so left it!
I actually striped down an old non-functional HDMI cable and used its thin single strand wires as sensor and heater cables. The width of two such twisted wires is just as that of a spider vane, and can easily carry the current for the sensor and 0.5 amps to secondary mirror heater. Problem solved
As you have mentioned, self-adhesive copper tape is a good idea to use as a conductor. I have used it in some of my past projects and this one too. If you check the 4th picture (Power supply, Primary heater band & Multimeter) in my post #119, you will see the
Copper tape covering the top half of resistor row. Here, I have used it to spread the heat to the space between two resistors.
I will share more detailed pics of my build in a day or two.
BTW, Carbon RC8 is really a good choice. In last few weeks, I too was looking for a used RC6/8 or Nexstar 6/8SE (portable enough for travel visual astronomy), but then ordered SW-Virtuoso 150p. Its arriving soon.
