Kokatha man
28-01-2008, 12:23 AM
Thought I'd join the blowhards and put in my (tonight's) experience with collimating using the Orion combo tool.
Have made do with the ol' film canister for the last 6 weeks since I picked up the Bint 10" dob (yeah, it came pretty well collimated but I just had to bugger it all up just so's I could do my usual "sink or swim" antics with all and anything.)
Fortunately my ordered laser collimator didn't arrive in Bintel's last shipment, and they sent me the Orion tool which I'd told Don I wanted too.....bingo!!!
After a bit of argy-barging around to get the secondary pretty damn centred in the focusser - I then engaged in a bit of twitching of the bob's knobs of the secondary, some primary adjustment and then a repeat of each process that had everything looking bulls-eye smick.
But it was the star-tests that made me feel like getting up on this soap-box: beautiful concentric diffraction rings that were as true as rifle-range targets!
Please excuse my unabashed pride and satisfaction: erick, you can have that Andrews unit you asked me about - I didn't even try it but I reckon bugger it, if you want it to tinker with it let me know. This tool's my baby now!!!
The only thing from the plethora of advice being posted that I didn't achieve was getting a sharp focus of the (straight visual) cross hairs - yes I pulled back from the ep etc, but concluded that them being slightly off-focus was normal and no impediment to the process. And making sure the polished 45's cutaway was directed at a light source sure helped.
Regards, Darryl.
Have made do with the ol' film canister for the last 6 weeks since I picked up the Bint 10" dob (yeah, it came pretty well collimated but I just had to bugger it all up just so's I could do my usual "sink or swim" antics with all and anything.)
Fortunately my ordered laser collimator didn't arrive in Bintel's last shipment, and they sent me the Orion tool which I'd told Don I wanted too.....bingo!!!
After a bit of argy-barging around to get the secondary pretty damn centred in the focusser - I then engaged in a bit of twitching of the bob's knobs of the secondary, some primary adjustment and then a repeat of each process that had everything looking bulls-eye smick.
But it was the star-tests that made me feel like getting up on this soap-box: beautiful concentric diffraction rings that were as true as rifle-range targets!
Please excuse my unabashed pride and satisfaction: erick, you can have that Andrews unit you asked me about - I didn't even try it but I reckon bugger it, if you want it to tinker with it let me know. This tool's my baby now!!!
The only thing from the plethora of advice being posted that I didn't achieve was getting a sharp focus of the (straight visual) cross hairs - yes I pulled back from the ep etc, but concluded that them being slightly off-focus was normal and no impediment to the process. And making sure the polished 45's cutaway was directed at a light source sure helped.
Regards, Darryl.