I ended up going with a design like this AWS ground station, which has two 180 degree range motors.

I'm curious as I ran into the issue when I was instead using one 360 degree azmiuth stepper, and a 180 degree elevation stepper - how do you control that the wiring doesn't get twisted with azimuth rotation, as the elevation stepper has to rotate with the azimuth?

I'm just curious how this is done with real radio telescopes/ground stations.

Thank you, for my elevation stepper, I am using two rolling bearings, directly driven by a stepper - I'm using direct drive to save on space, but if I haven't tested that I'll have enough torque.

For the azimuth drive, I will try using these slew bearings, with the benefit that I can feed my elevation stepper motor wires through the center.

~ 500 grams

the dish is actually a model, thus the weight is not that important. However, I wanted to design it realistically to what would be done.

Thus, I should put teeth on the inside ring, and drive it using teeth on my stepper motor. To increase the "torque" on my stepper, I believe I can also use teeth ratio

thanks!

I'm a little confused about which side i would attach the dish too.

Here is a picture.

Does the dish attach to the inside, and if such, wouldnt all of the weight be on the bearings (as there is nothing to support it underneath).