Has anyone had issues with the shelves that came with the bays. The ones sent with my order are about 4" to deep and interfere with the aluminum posts at the connection point. Even without the post they run into each other with side by side bays. I removed them so I could begin wall assembly which comes with its own challenges since lining up the holes is similar to the issue associated with the bay top alignment with the bay sides.
I've wrote to Babak yesterday (Saturday) and don't expect to hear back until early this coming week.
Rodney A Michael, this has been a problem since day one, I do like your modification to the shelves though.
BTW, the posts should all be straight and facing the center of the dome. All I can say is that when I assembled my dome in 2018 nothing fit together as I expected and many holes got drilled out to make the sections fit together. I understand it's better now, but I don't have any explanation about why one of the posts being twisted, but you might try loosening the flanges and making some adjustments to the fit.
Steven
I have a 2021 NexDome with 4 bays. I am in the midst of assembly. I have the walls circularized and attached firmly to my concrete pad. The 4 bays all adjoin with at least 1 other bay. 2 of the bays have another bay on each side. In 3 of the bays I have installed a supplied shelf. In the 4th bay, which adjoins only 1 other bay, I have not installed a shelf. I will park a wheeled tool cart in the bay without a shelf.
I could not circularize the walls without trimming a couple of front shelf corners (see photos below). I believe that the shelves are unrealistically spec'd such that if the injection molded plastic walls and joining flanges are manufactured perfectly, adjoining shelves will touch at their corners. I suspect that hardly anyone has been lucky enough to have the experience of adjoining shelves fitting without making an aftermarket modification.
My brother and I spent 10 man-hours attempting to circularize the walls (bay shelves in place) before I reluctantly decided that I had to trim the corners. On one of the bays I could not tighten the sidewall attachment bolts fully and had to leave a space between wall and shelf to accommodate a post.
Another problem that we encountered is that the bay-to-bay plastic flanges do not always fit together well and may leave the face of a post turned slightly away from the dome center (see 1st photo below where the post hits each shelf at a slightly different point. Compare to the 2nd photo where the flanges seem to fit together better.). I don't know what problem that may cause ultimately. But it may play a slight role in shelf installation.
Since circularization of the walls and the entire dome is so critical to automating dome rotation, I strongly believe that Babak and NexDome would be wise and would be doing their automation customers a great favor by reducing the front-to-back shelf dimension by 1-inch or so. The shelves would still be perfectly functional.
Not that I've been told. I, too, had the shelves hitting each other with bays next to each other. I t was suggested that bays not be side by side, which didn't help me, so I went with wooden substitutes.
Steven
Have problems with bay shelves been resolved, e.g., shelves protruding outside of bay space; shelves overlapping on aluminum uprights; shelves hitting each other in adjacent bays, etc.?
We have had a night of heavy rain and upon inspection I have found that where the door is supposed to seal against the body there is a gap between the gasket and the door which has let in a pool of water, this is a poor design which needs rectifying .
I had to notch out each side of the shelf to get the shelf to fit
Also I could not get the holes in the bay parts to line up and the fact that there is no bottom to the bay would allow water to enter .
The side panels in the main walls should have 4 small holes and 2 larger holes , mine had 5 small and 1 large in each panel.
The main difference I have found between my previous SkyShed and Nextdome is massive condensation so much that I am afraid to leave my telescope and computer set up and , the Skyshed had much thicker walls so did not suffer from this problem.
After all that moaning I still like the look of the observatory and once I find a way of keeping my equipment dry I will be happy.
Gordon Semmens
I did notice this also. I was going to just use one shelf on mine (2 bay) but since my bays are next to each other, they interfere with each other as well as the post. I just pulled it off and will use something else. I like that too chest idea, can also lock it to keep your Naglers safe! I do have a small Metro rack thing, I'll try that for storage, and probably build a custom computer desk or something similar.
Steve - if you don't get help here fast enough - join our Nexdome user group on facebook. LOTS of activity in there.
I didn't install the shelves. I didn't like the metal. Several of us have purchased tool chests (with drawers) and set them in the bay.