Alejandro's MkIII with GOTO

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Alejandro is working hard on his MkIII to add GOTO using stepper motors.

He has also added some clever mechanical additions to aid fine alignment of his mounting on its pier. These fine adjustments will aid the precision of his telescope pointing and the accuracy of his drives.

The overall view showing original bronze wormwheel slow motions. The worms in their housings and what I presume to be a stepper motor resting on the workbench beside the mounting

Here Alejandro has used turnbuckles to allow fine adjustment of the polar axis altitude angle.

Some gears are also visible in this image. Presumably these will allow the slow motion worms to be driven by the stepper motors. He talks about pulleys so he may be using toothed belts between the stepper motors and worms.

Here is Alejandro's clever fine adjustment of mounting azimuth by finger power alone. I like the sheer style and neat simplicity of his approach.

Alejandro tells me in his emails that he is working on the electronic circuit board which will allow GOTO using popular sky mapping software. This is an exciting possibility which I wouldn't mind having on my own Fullerscopes mountings. I hope the complications of the circuit board are manageable by a relative novice at such things. We shall see.

I look forward to hearing more details as he makes further progress. No doubt more images will follow when he has the stepper motors in place on the mounting.

Anybody else who has applied GOTO to a Fullerscopes mounting is very welcome to get in touch so that the information can be shared with a wider audience: If anybody just wants to share an image or two of their own Fullerscopes telescope or mounting they are welcome to contact me.

Image size is of no importance since I can easily resize to match the needs of the blog. Since the Windows image resizer toy only worked with XP I am presently using the free VSO Image Resizer with Vista.

Many of these telescopes and mountings date back over 30 years so the present generation of amateur astronomers probably haven't much knowledge of this manufacturer or their products. Patrick Moore had a 15" made by them and there was an 18" German equatorial mounted Fullerscopes Newtonian at Charterhouse in the Mendips in the English West Country.

You can leave a comment on the blog or email me at chris.b (at) mail.dk with any information on Fullerscopes or images of their instruments.

AN UPDATE:

Alejandro has been in touch again and provided some excellent images and fascinating videos of his modified MkIII.

 Here the telescope is mounted on the modified MkIII. That is a substantial concrete pier.

A close-up of the MkIII showing the worm gear and toothed belt reduction drive from the stepper motor.

The modified MkIII seen from the south.

A short video showing the toothed belt driving the worm.

And another video showing the mounting moving in both axes to the software control.

Click on any image for an enlargement. Back click to return to the text.