The building of a major observatory mount.
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After I had concerned me with the theory and all technical drawings was finished, it could finally start. Here I selected a few pictures of the building of heavy mount. | |
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Finally the time has come. At December,16 2006 we could installing for the first time the mount on the column and divine the stability. Now exactly 2 years had passed, since I ordered the 30cm mirror blank and so to got going the emergence of the observatory. Up to the Firstlight passed however for bad weather reasons some long weeks again. |
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What avail the best and most stable mount of the world, if it's not properly mounted. Here you can sees the baseplate, which will ancored with the 8 pieces 20mm stainless steel screw directly in the concrete of the 40cm column. |
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Here I assembled everything someday. My concrete weights hold out the 35kg for the 12" Telescope. |
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IIn March 2006 I could admire for the first time the mount completely. Were missing still the engines and the transmission cases, however the impressing size and the stability let devine already here. But now we had to build an observatory quickly because this "Monster" weighs more than 100kg. So there was no thinking about a outdoor test constructin and I had as always to exercise patience. |
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The Equatorial Wedge is ready. Time to care about weights. Nothing better just occurred to me than to fill items of plastic tube with concrete and iron scrap. However I had to change to steel later, since the concrete weights were too light. |
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I couldn't let it and assembled the two axles test way. Later then I had so my problems the taper roller bearings get out the fits when the parts should be welded…. |
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Here I had finally all lathe and standard parts together! Later than I replaced the sliding clutches against a new bronze version yet, aluminum is therefore simply too soft and also too temperature-sensitive. |
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Here we have a 240mm worm gear with build-on sliding clutch. The snail wheel has dobble array skew-angle roller bearings and the angles to the worm gear can be adjusted. |
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Unfortunately the worm gear has an easy defect, the worm doesn't fit straightly on the snail-wheel, which I however considered structurally. |
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I recreated this paperboard model from my plans. I wanted to go surely, that I don't build in mistakes in my CAD designs. As a result I extended the axles of the mount around 3cm. This turned out as good compromise among rigidity and zenith freedom of the telescope. |