Man that settling tank idea is straight up genius. It's like how you always gotta have a buffer zone for anything in life, pour your coffee too fast and it splashes everywhere, same deal with water and debris. Once stuff gets a minute to chill out and sink, everything downstream works a hundred times better. I bet you could even run that bucket through a cheap pond filter after and be set for years. It's funny how the simple fix is always the one nobody thinks about first, we all want the big fancy solution when a Home Depot bucket does the trick.

That "machine misses a fold" line is solid advice, I read a similar tip about ATM jams from a cash handler forum last week.

...and that's exactly why my torque wrench has a little note taped to it that says "trust the click, not the wrist." I did the same thing with a flywheel once, except the bolt didn't even snap, it just stripped out so bad I had to drill it out. That was a fun Saturday. Eleven years of feel and I still can't beat a $30 piece of metal with a spring in it. Honestly, if my gut was this reliable at picking lottery numbers I'd be retired, but here we are.

Blame your oven, not the commenter who couldn't know your gear.

Man that first time you see the stacked result is such a kick in the gut, like why didn't anyone tell me this sooner. I remember doing the same thing with Andromeda, 60 second subs for months and just getting this mushy grey blob. For flats and darks, I'd say once you hit around 100 frames they start making a real difference, especially flats since they fix that dusty vignetting in the corners that gets more obvious the more you stack. I skip darks most nights now if I'm lazy and honestly the flats matter way more, so you're probably fine sneaking past calibration for a while.