Friday 12th July. Thunder Dome! DC Focuser motor Pt.2.

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As I prepared to take the images for these last two posts it decided to have a cloudburst. I was in the dome at the time and the thunder of torrential rain on the thin, plywood dome was exciting to say the least! It went on for about 20 minutes as I waited to return to my PC indoors to check the images I had just taken with flash. A complete waste of time and they had  be repeated later with a mixture of flash and natural light.
 
More images and more details will follow next week as the new stuff hopefully arrives in the post. Delivery time is almost always a bit of a lottery. Though some dealers always seem to be much quicker than others. The weekend is intervening and nothing moves on the track and trace.

Meanwhile I have taken the opportunity to show the [rather crude] motor mounting arrangements on the flawless Feather Touch 3545 rack & its finely adjustable body. The screws will be changed to socket head, stainless steel of more appropriate lengths once the toothed belt drive arrangement is properly established. Stainless steel Nyloc nuts will ensure everything stays firmly in place. I ought to polish the plastic parts I have added. Though they go almost unnoticed being in black set against black.

NOTE: I do NOT recommend that you try to remove your own FT focuser rack. AND, I was specifically warned against doing so by Starlight Instruments. It was just easier [for me] to fit the motor mounting to the bare rack assembly without causing cosmetic damage to the focuser body this way.

I had already dismantled the focuser to fit the turned, tube adapter ring. Starlight Instruments will happily provide a superbly finished ring to support your own focuser to match most commercial OTAs. I had special needs for my home made, 7" refractor, so chose another route. This involved my own lathe work on a beautifully made ring supplied by Teleskop-Express.

Starlight Instruments go to great lengths to achieve a superb and absolutely flawless finish and fine adjustment to all their products. Removing the rack assembly is very likely to undo those careful adjustments.

The cost of a failure due to your own, poor mechanical skills would be an absolute nightmare! Imagine the focuser falling off. Or allowing a costly camera to drop off, onto concrete! The OTA would immediately lose its balance and crash, nose down against its pier or even the ground. A fine, large aperture APO objective might be impossible to replace at ANY price!

I have a very long lifetime of experience of fine mechanical work to call on. So I took all the risks involved from that secure knowledge base. You copy my example entirely at YOUR OWN RISK!

Click on any image for an enlargement.

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