I was certain not to move the jig at all before cutting the second circle. control. The motor is much lighter than the geared motor. I centered the focuser 8 inches from the top of the tube, using a 2.5 inch hole drilling saw with smaller holes for the bolts that would hold the focuser. To get a slide-fit in a 3D printed part, you normally make the hole 0.5mm larger than the shaft. installations. The bearings only need to be Every primary telescope mirror has a fixed focal length thats usually 4 to 6 times the width of the mirror. Parts List (the full story of acquiring the parts), The primary, secondary, spider and secondary holderDiscovery Optics. This simple homemade device will reduce star trails far better than if the camera was mounted on a tripod alone. After waiting for the contact cement to dry to the touch, and with my wife's help, I carefully aligned the edge of the veneer with the guideline on the tube and pressed the first inch together. Save over 40% off the annual cover price for a full year (4 issues) of Make. The little app is simple and works great. Another vote for Pierre's helical Crayford design. pageTracker._trackPageview(); This means I can use FocusMax to do the focusing. Use mild soap and distilled . Just as it was about to come into focus, the focuser bottomed out. Drawing lines between opposite corners of the tube box sides allowed me to locate the center point on each side. Building the mirror box is tricky, because the entire optical assembly (mirror cell, mirror box, trusses, secondary cage) must balance at the center of rotation of the arms. With adapters for any Meade 1x200-ACF or LS model, and chord to plug into focuser port. Or in my case, back to SolidWorks :-). The shroud made from two 22 inch tall containers came out short, so I had to add an eleven inch strip of nylon. The blue pieces of the rocker box and ground board are arranged as in the diagrams in (figure 2). The hole did need to be enlarged slightly by moving the bit within the hole , but in the end, the fit seems right. both sides. Attach the ball head to the top board. I have not yet figured out a better way to hold the tube. After the second call, I received a response that it would be ready at the end of the following week. After researching several possible sources for a primary mirror, I decided to order an f/5 12.5 inch mirror from Discovery Optics. I brought a saw with me so that I cut it in half to fit in my minivan. Crayford focusers are considered superior to entry-level rack and pinion focusers, normally found in this type of device. The belt and pulleys are off-the-shelf items available on Amazon. Once built, line the undersides of the arms with textured ABS plastic as a bearing surface. Helicals are adaptable to both refractors and reflectors, but do not "play nice" with zoom eyepieces because "zooming" becomes a two handed operation to avoid changing focus. It is used to setup water outlet from overhead water tanks. Drill the holes for the knitting I used one of these scrap pieces to draw an angle of 70 degrees to the edge of the arc so that I could later place the teflon pads on the arcs. - Bill. This extra space would allow the tube to be repositioned within the tube box to rotate the eyepiece or balance the tube. on my binocular scope for quite a while now and really like them. This resulted in a gear that wasn't true and "wobbled" a bit. Here is a link to the main FILES area on Robert Brown's site. I don't have the skills to build a focuser using a. Share it with us! As I read the book I decided that I should build a 12.5 inch truss tube scope. This motor has a larger shaft diameter (8mm) and is quite a bit heavier overall than the direct drive motor, mainly because of the gearbox. My newtonian telescope, like most others, came fitted with a nasty rack and pinion focuser. : "http://www. Sew the seam, and sew an elastic cord into the top to secure it to the secondary cage. While round tubing is sturdy, square tubing is easier to work with. A week after they said they would send the secondary and other parts, I called to ask if things had been sent. really stiff and light for their size, and even though a #2 is pretty I like the old way of using stepper motors and other stuff introduced years ago by Mel Bartels, he is a master for me. Another thing, the resolution on the Dumbell nebula seems a bit too high for that telescope. I feel it is a wonderful thing to free oneself from the "store-bought" world, as Tombaugh did, and to use your imagination and skills to develop your own, personal way of viewing the sky. Keeping with the 'simple ' part of your request, here is a helical 2"/1.25" focuser made from std plumbing parts. You will need to remove the regular focus knob on your telescope's focuser. Make an account on JLCPCB.com, upload the Gerber zip file, that's it! 1" Rack & Pinion Focuser. The next day, I centered the rocker on the rocker bottom (which had been cut using the same method as the side bearing circles), drawing perpendicular lines through the center of the rocker bottom to use as a guide, and tracing the position on the rocker bottom. I was annoyed to have made the mistake, but very glad that I checked the position on stars before wrapping the tube in veneer. I don't *do* pretty. I'm also going to focus on only one version of Robert's focuser (there are many). After the pieces were glued together, I used a belt sander to smooth out any rough edges, being careful to keep both rocker sides and both side bearings exactly the same. weight. #@$%^#@!!!!! This is the mirror box for my 16", with Jim doing a bit of cleanup sanding. the side of a rigid secondary cage. The drawings are only approximately to scale. A Pocket Sundial From a Broken Pocket Watch! 10 years ago Using plywood, make 4 attachment blocks to pair the trusses together and create a small ledge for the secondary cage to rest on while you secure it. Just to make sure I liked the stain, I applied some to a piece of scrap wood. I gave them a call and they said they had one on the shelf14 inches in diameter and 12 feet long! By adjusting the bolts, the mirror can be pointed toward the correct spot. They even offered to send the spider, secondary holder, and secondary mirror immediately so that I could begin working on the tube while I waited for the primary. Similar photos at http://www.telescopegeek.com/gallery.htm require 100+ minute exposure times on his 20" telescope and $3200 camera. The last time I checked, that particular SBIG camera used on TelescopeGeek had an eight month lead time.A 20" scope gathers 2.6 times more light than a 12.5" scope, therefore equivalent exposures on this one would take 200+ minutes, at least. It has become an indispensable piece of equipment for me that so beats hacking and filing PVC pipes etc. For the ATMer I do find that there are an endless number of parts that can be designed and printed for home built telescopes and binoscopes. Perfect for astrophotography or during high power planetary observation. LVLaserTech is right please do not vote for the pictures my instructable is for the build of the telescope not the quality of the photos.and as i said before i was not there is there a possibility that he sent me the wrong photos sure is there a possibility that he used a different mount than the one i saw sure is there a possibility that he is lying to me me about what he did sure. As I set of the scope, several club members came over to check things out and it was nice to hear the positive comments on the appearance of the scope. They eyepiece height ended up being about 5'10" high at zenith. my 12.5" trackball, but I didn't If you enter it in the next contest please let me know and i will make sure to vote for you. drneilmb, thanks for sharing the focuser design. Knitting needles are an eyepiece. I welded mine from steel square tubing. Im sorry to hear you couldn't make the contest. This NEMA-17 direct drive stepper motor is available from Adafruit and many other sellers. This motor has a 5mm drive shaft. that is a great website that guy has some fantastic photos. #2 knitting needle would be just about right. The mirror box encloses the mirror cell and allows the entire telescope to rotate vertically. on Introduction, Very nice build nikon20. The mirror itself must also be able to tilt in three dimensions in order to aim its light at the secondary mirror (a process called collimation). This proved fatal for the stepper motor! With the DRV8825 and Arduino Nano plugged in, the basic board is complete. Since there is no drill bit that exactly matches the 13.1mm of the shaft, I had to do some rough enlargement of the hole. This allowed me to cut perfect identical circles. The silly colours are mainly due to me experimenting with various clothes dyes in the anodising. For about $3 we can buy a tank valve kit that has a threaded 2" i.d. 10 inch or 12 inch. It uses a primary mirror to capture and reflect light, a secondary mirror to direct light into an eyepiece, and a focuser to make fine adjustments for viewing. 1/4" x 20 bolt, and the nylon bolt end against the smooth knitting To get this arc, I actually moved the radius of the jig, At some point in the building process, my goal became to finish the scope by RocheStar Fest, an annual event of the. This is because my router bit was inch and the arc would be cut by the outside edge of the bit (where the circle had been cut by the inside edge.) You reach a point where the picture doesn't seem to change much, so you never know where the very sweetest spot in the focus is. Meade Zero Image-Shift Electronic Micro-Focuser This high precision focuser allows you to obtain an extremely accurate image focus. I wasn't there so i can be 100% but i do not think my friend was lying to me and i believe the pictures are from my telescope my kids use it for stargazing a lot i have seen some deepspace but i use it mainly for sketching the moon and i like to view solar flares. To cut the circles, I used a router with a straight cutting bit and a circle cutting jig. You really need a step ladder even for my 10" when pointed overhead. This Instructable describe the planning, design, and parts of the scope, as well as the process of building The scope. by cranking on Step 5, 9 years ago Measure the diameter of the exposed shaft. I drew a guide line straight down the side of the tube and cut the veneer to length with one extra inch on each side68 inches long. I'd Reply Orient this assembly to allow you to view an object on the far horizon. I used my router to "mill" a flat area for better contact with the focus adjustment rod. If you go to buy all of the components for this project from dealers, you will see that you mostly have to buy at least 5 parts, sometimes bags of 50 parts! Several of my Recent Images have been focused with this system. I knew that I would be returning the mirror cell to them, but just for fun I decided to see how it would fit in the tube. A project collaboration and documentation platform. It takes the unknown out of focusing, and is easy to re-focus between filters, or refocus several times during a long exposure run as the world cools down. The bigger upvc nut will be attached to focuser plate and longer threaded side will be used on it for the focusing. Edited by howardcano, 24 May 2020 - 09:29 PM. All Orion 1.25" and 2" telescope focusers are engineered to provide smooth drawtube action to ensure you hit the exact focus point . A Pocket Sundial From a Broken Pocket Watch! Bore out some 2.5 inch bar and mill a flat down the side making sure it is lined up. I sourced my own Stepper motor and 1:150 reduction gearbox from RS, who are just up the road. A celebration of the Maker Movement, a family-friendly showcase of invention and creativity that gathers It took about 3 weeks but, since Anttler's did not even reply to the Paypal dispute, I received a Paypal refund. Here we see the following components installed: Notice we are NOT populating the parts of the board intended for Wifi or BLED. What materials did you use? You should now be able to drill the 4 holes at each corner. Nice work and great instructable! document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); I had chosen a boxy, rigid design for the binocular scope, so It Two inch internal diameter drawtube. My homemade motorized telescope focuser for Celestron C8. eyepiece on the ground (or worse, on your primary mirror!)