homemade telescope focuser

My DIY Motorized Telescope Focuser - YouTube Thank you for your pages. That evening I spent most of my time rediscovering the many DSOs around Sagittarius, especially the Lagoon Nebula and the Trifid Nebula. Easy DIY motorized battery free telescope focuser - YouTube Low, or Zero slop when changing direction. It is named after the Crayford Manor House Astronomical Society, Crayford, London, England where it was invented by John Wall, a member of the astronomical society which meets there. All i did was supply the telescope as far as his camera equipment i dont know what he used i never saw it all i know is he had my scope for about a month while i was traveling and he gave me these photos. Drawing lines between opposite corners of the tube box sides allowed me to locate the center point on each side. flexing. that is a great website that guy has some fantastic photos. At some point in the building process, my goal became to finish the scope by RocheStar Fest, an annual event of the Rochester Astronomy Club. The Crayford Focuser and DIY Focuser for Homemade Telescope By trukmeeilee in Circuits Cameras 3,461 3 1 Download Favorite By trukmeeilee Follow More by the author: The Crayford focuser is a simplified focusing mechanism for amateur astronomical telescopes. Trim off any unused fabric along the base. Thin-wall aluminum tubing is used to attach the mirror box to the secondary cage. Gift the gift of Make: Magazine this holiday season! I installed the spider first, about one inch down from the end of the square end of the tube. #2 knitting needle would be just about right. You simply glue or screw the 'nut' part to your scope OTA, and thread the tube part in/out to focus. 1/4" x 20 bolt, and the nylon bolt end against the smooth knitting I attached them with very small brads, countersinking the brads. It may need some careful coaxing with a screwdriver. It is size 1.25 inch with a clear inside dia-meter. Whether you need a basic rack-and-pinion telescope focuser for your homemade telescope project or a premium Crayford-type model with dual-speed focusing as a performance upgrade, you have come to the right place. It stalled when tension on the belt increased. 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. Telescope Magazine. Star Adventurer Pro Pack Counter Weight Bar Thumb Screw Upgrade. Plan ahead by carefully weighing all components and approximating the center mass of the optical assembly. The diameter of the focuser is usually indicated in inches. Perfect for astrophotography or during high power planetary observation. (Sorry you Put it all together This NEMA-17 direct drive stepper motor is available from Adafruit and many other sellers. I file a dispute with Paypal to begin the process of getting my money back. Tom's Homemade Telescope Page - Udder Nonsense - Google (A badly tilted focuser may subtly alter the illumination pattern of the focal plane to a degree that would be impossible to perceive visually but that's about it.) 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. In scaling up the K/B 8 inch design, I made a few changes that, I hope, will improve the design for 12.5 inch aperture. I also doubled the thickness of the rocker sides (not the front wall) to provide better support for the heavier tube. spambots that search the internet for addresses to send junk mail to.) Un-real!!! wobbly knob still works, and adds character. The blue pieces of the rocker box and ground board are arranged as in the diagrams in (figure 2). I described it two years ago in this thread:https://www.cloudyniuser/?p=8879835 . The next day, I called back to ask their opinion about the kind of spider and secondary holder to order. I waited until dark and pointed the scope at the sky. tube and nut that fits the outside threads. The side bearings are each made from 2 identical semicircles of 5/8 inch plywood glued together to make a thickness of 1 inches. Thicker walls also required thicker side bearings so that the outside of the bearings would line up with the outside of the rocker sides. Thanks Peter. Robert Brown did an excellent video on how to work out your stepper motor requirements. 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. You should now be able to drill the 4 holes at each corner. I don't have the skills to build a focuser using a. both sides. I have one on my 12" f/5 truss dob and the focuser knob is on the top surface of the UTA. The secondary holder is adjustable, so I could didn't have to get the location perfect. Those are the last screws to be tightened. 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. Dozens of projects in every issue covering electronics, craft, fabrication, and more, Learn tips and skill-building tutorials from experts in the maker community. Ideally, the spacer would be 1 inch long and have a smaller diameter, but I didn't get this one right the first time. Some quick tips to note if you are making a homemade telescope are: 1. Two inch internal diameter drawtube. The mirror box encloses the mirror cell and allows the entire telescope to rotate vertically. Feel free to take on that part if you like, but you're on your own :-). I did run into a small problem with the focuser. Make an account on JLCPCB.com, upload the Gerber zip file, that's it! 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. My secondary is 4; for tips on choosing size, click here. Did you make this project? It has reminded me of one of my long term aims to make a telescope that has been buried by the demands of the rest of my life! The last chapter of the book describes a plan for an 8 inch sonotube dob with a few design elements from their truss design, and, as I read that chapter, the simplicity of its construction was very appealing. Once the pieces were cut and I held them around the tube, I decided to cut them a bit smaller because the extra space was too much. 5 weeks after I had ordered the mirror, I called to ask about its status. There are some test sketches in the "Tests" folder, start with those. I started with a spacer that with a inch outer diameter. i am not trying to win this contest with photos. We tried this in our back yard, but found that it was too difficult to aim both the tube and the moving mirror at distant trees in our suburban yard. I drilled holes for the screws that avoided the location of the ring, and attached the rocker bottom. I will have a lot of fun building my homemade 12.5 inch Dobsonian Telescope!!! I placed my telrad, optical finder, and an eyepiece on the focuser end of the tube and, using a broomstick as a balance point, found that the tube balanced 22 inches from the bottom. I am working on a diy focuser design for my 6" F/8 telescope and asking suggestions for simple focuser. 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. 5 weeks after I had ordered the mirror, I called to ask about its status. The premier publication of maker projects, skill-building tutorials, in-depth reviews, and inspirational stories, As I read the book I decided that I should build a 12.5 inch truss tube scope. Now I can simply insert the PVC cap on the end of a 4" pvc tube. I made a similar helical focuser with a nice 2 inch thing I found in Classifieds. It turns out that sonotubes are a stock item in 8 inch, 10 inch, 12 inch, and sometimes even 16 inch diameters. To interface with the computer, I have used the Artemis Focuser module from Steve, Arthur and Co. Pierre's Helical Crayford gets my vote hands-down for elegant simplicity. Below are cutting diagrams and diagrams of the rocker and tube box with side bearings. I had some carboy caps that make good knobs. Nice one. It is used to setup water outlet from overhead water tanks. A week after they said they would send the secondary and other parts, I called to ask if things had been sent. My concern turned to alarm when my wife told me that Discovery had charged the balance due on all items to my account a few weeks earlier. really stiff and light for their size, and even though a #2 is pretty I think I got what I wanted and seems best solution for me. on Introduction. We were careful to press out any bubbles as we went, but when the job was done we found that there were multiple bubbles in the veneer. The bearings only need to be the bearings right at the edge of the frame, reducing the frame to Fairly easy to build and could be adapted to suit any SCT focuser. If you follow the procedures described above, your telescope's optics will be perfectly aligned. Over how many nights did this photography session take place? The kit just contains the electronics - it is up to the user to find a stepper motor and attach it to their own telescope focuser. This combination has proved to be effective for all positions except when the tube is pointed directly up. While a sling or whiffletree provide the best edge support, a two-point edge support is much easier to construct. you could probably space the bearings 3/4" apart instead of 1" and mount I have no dog in this hunt whatsoever, but if people are impressed by these photographs and vote for it because of them when there's no proof that this scope generated the photos and there IS data to the contrary (see below), then that's certainly not fair to the other contestants. My newtonian telescope, like most others, came fitted with a nasty rack and pinion focuser. I want to put my 12.5 mirror in a collapsible structure so I can haul it easy, Say a truss tube design, 7 years ago This one is based on the DRV8825 driver chip and a NEMA-17 stepper motor. The focuser is the part of the telescope that holds the eyepiece or camera, and by moving in or out, closer or farther from the . Pioneered by John Dobson in the 1960s, the instrument combines a Newtonian reflector telescope with a unique two-axis movable base. Download and unzip. To test the concept I used a short piece of two inch PVC for the draw tube. Link to the motor speed controller kit:http://www.jaycar.com.au/productView.asp?ID=KC5225(a 5K external potentiometer will be required): http://www.jaycar.com.au/productView.asp?ID=RP3508The drive motor:http://www.jaycar.com.au/productView.asp?ID=YG2734The gears:http://www.jaycar.com.au/productView.asp?ID=YG2736The motor forward/reverse switch:http://www.jaycar.com.au/productView.asp?ID=ST0506The push button:http://www.jaycar.com.au/productView.asp?ID=SP0711 The core of the telescope, the steel mirror cell holds and adjusts the heavy, curved primary mirror. Robert is a super guy and more than willing to help those who choose to follow in his footsteps. the interior diameter is just a nudge over 2". eyepiece on the ground (or worse, on your primary mirror!) NEMA-17 Stepper Motor - see below, there are two options. This motor is available on Amazon. I redrilled the holes for the mirror cell and got ready to wrap it. I will post the pic of final focuser once ready. That's pretty much the focuser. It's easy to shim it to exactly 2" with adhesive labels placed one at a time inside the tube until a 2" eyepiece or 1.25" adapter is snug. At this point, the scope was pretty much finished. And bolt to scope love to hear from people who are interested in this focuser design. I decided to use baltic birch because it is recommended by Kriege and Berry as well as many online sources. The hole did need to be enlarged slightly by moving the bit within the hole , but in the end, the fit seems right. It has become an indispensable piece of equipment for me that so beats hacking and filing PVC pipes etc. I'm' glad I did, because I didn't like the first color that I had chosen. To hold the tube in place within the tube box, I used a combination of pieces of felt inside the box and wooden shims between the tube and the box. The rocker sides are each made of two identical pieces of inch plywood glued together, creating two sides one inch thick. I will get good 30-40 mm focusing range. Able to make myself using my own humble tools (or toys as the pros will call them!) I did not glue the bearings to the tube box in case I needed to adjust the position later. For complete instructions on building a telescope such as this one, I strongly recommend buying a copy of The Dobsonian Telescope by David Kriege and Richard Berry. Save over 40% off the annual cover price for a full year (4 issues) of Make. I made this Crayford style focuser using plywood scraps and surplus bearings. Unbelievable! Showcasing amazing maker projects of 2022. I have built a homemade electric focuser for my Celestron 8SE using a radio control hobby servo and some spare parts. See the images how I plan to assemble it. 1N5408 3A Diode (you may need to make the pins smaller to fit through the holes in the board. Next, attach the eyepiece and the focuser to the top part of the telescope tube. It features 2 semicircular arms, and mounting points for the trusses (T-nuts are fine), as well as a lid to keep the mirror safe when the telescope is not in use. I started by trying to drill out a metal gear for the focuser shaft. 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. How To Build A Dobsonian Telescope [Guide 2022] - DopeGuides To place the primary mirror, I installed the secondary and installed the primary in the mirror cell. During assembly, youll attach the trusses to the mirror box, then sit the secondary cage on top and bolt everything in place. I had to take apart the focuser in order to get my bolts in place. After waiting for the stain to dry for a day, I applied polyurethane in two coats, going over the surface with 0000 steel wool between coats. CNC files (optional) Download the Sketchup files. The focuser shaft on the telescope is 13.1mm in diameter. The scope including the optics, truss tubes, and eye pieces all stored in a single box making it easy to store and transport by car, but it was a little too big to fit in the overhead compartment or under the seat on most aircraft. ill ask him for a detailed list of what he used and when i get that ill post it here for you. forward and back along with the drawtube when you focus, and you'll get If you enter it in the next contest please let me know and i will make sure to vote for you. The lumber yard also gave me a lower price than I expected. Rack & Pinion: For many years the standard focuser was of the rack-and-pinion type - a small pinion gear moved the flat toothed rack that was attached to or built into the moving focusing tube that holds the eyepiece.However, this geared system was far from ideal, with some wobble due to the friction fit between the fixed and moving tubes and backlash due to the gears.