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Gday Bo
Have attached a design sketch for my "pierette" and a few piccies of its pre assy onto my AZEQ5.
Basically, the EQ6 uses a 65mmOD x 5mm deep recess in the top plate to keep it central, and the AZEQ5 uses a 60mm x 20mm deep hole to do the same thing.
As such, my top plate uses a 60mm dia central hole for the EQ5 and the small 65mm recess allows the EQ6 to fit on the same base.
Both bases sit quite happily on it.
To allow me to fit the pierette to my Meade tripod/pier plate, i needed to make a through bolt with an interchangeable 8mm/10mm thread at the top and a 1/2"UNC-13 thread at the bottom.
To do this, i used a bit of SS pipe and permanently pinned a tapped coupler to the bottom. At the top, i have 2 threaded bolts turned down, such that their shanks will fit inside the tube.
Then i use a pin to hold them in situ. The bolt will only ever be loaded in tension, so a simple pin works very well.
I now simply screw the through bolt into the EQ6/AzEQ5 and then use the main tripod/pier bolt to apply downwards tension to hold it all together.
I found the assy worked OK but was rather finnicky when assembling, so i grabbed a bit of plastic downspouting and made a non structural spacer that allowed me to mildly pretension the through bolt and ensure it was always a set distance above the tripod/main pier plate, and held relatively still, prior to installing in the pier pipe. It also has the benefit of keeping the through rod central when assembling, and a hole the lower circular disk gives me a spot to hold the spare threaded insert
Andrew
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