Sorry guys, you will have to wait a bit longer for the next instalment, as I wound up in the Alfred hospital, on Monday morning. The tests are ongoing and hopefully it is nothing serious.
Hey Stephan...hope all goes well health wise My late mum used to say: here's to being healthy, wealthy and wise. The order wasn't glib...as without the first the rest are meaningless.....
"SHAME ON YOU BOTH JOHN AND BARRY AT ORION OPTICS UK. It does not come as a surprise when eventually learned from your other customers that you have been legally sued in courts several times over the years for supplying exceptionally inferior optics and mechanical assemblies along with false claims including non-existent interferometer test reports and so on. An absolute disgrace."
Well I think the message is pretty clear, stay away from that manufacturer.
Makes the high end manufacturers even more desirable and suddenly not so expensive after all, when you consider your time, aggravation and possible costs of useless adapters, quick fixes that don't last etc etc.
Thanks everyone for the well wishes.
On Monday morning I got up with some symptoms, out of the blue, that needed immediate investigation. The good news is that it was a false alarm. The bad news is that I caught a nasty influenza virus while I was in hospital and now I'm so lethargic that I can't do any work.
Before I went off to the hospital, I managed to restore the anodising on the reworked surfaces of the housing. My anodising is optimised for Al7075 alloy and this housing is made from Al6061. Although I get a hard coating on Al6061 too, it is not as deep black.
Thanks everyone for the well wishes.
On Monday morning I got up with some symptoms, out of the blue, that needed immediate investigation. The good news is that it was a false alarm. The bad news is that I caught a nasty influenza virus while I was in hospital and now I'm so lethargic that I can't do any work.
Before I went off to the hospital, I managed to restore the anodising on the reworked surfaces of the housing. My anodising is optimised for Al7075 alloy and this housing is made from Al6061. Although I get a hard coating on Al6061 too, it is not as deep black.
Looks good to me Stefan, I hope you get better soon. Nothing worse that coughing and feeling lousy.
Still feeling awful, but I managed to venture out to the shed today and do a bit of further investigation. I removed the small central lens from its centring (?) ring. It was snug, but not tight fit. They achieved that by wrapping two layers of scotch tape around the lens. The coatings look to me more like single layer magnesium fluoride on high refractive index glass, than broadband multilayer, but I can't prove that.
The diameter of the lens varies from a maximum of 50.17, down to 50.00, depending where you measure it.
I also had a look at concentricity of the two big spacers. The shorter one has a runout of 0.3mm on the inner diameter that defines the position of the small lens. The longer spacer is so bad that I did not even bother to measure it. Have a look at the two images. It is the same part rotated about 180 degrees. You don't need any measuring instruments to see how eccentric the inner machining is, as revealed by the varying width of the 45 degree step that was machined concentric with the inside.
I managed to machine the spacers today, in preparation for adding inserts where needed.
Mate you are a legend, probably still quite sick and getting into machine. Outstanding is all I can think here. The work looks great, especially when compared to how things looked before.
I made the inserts yesterday and today I bonded them on with epoxy prior to doing the finish machining in one setup for each spacer.
The central small lens will be mounted in a self centering way, so the big ring that went around it will not be needed.
Tomorrow I will make the retaining ring and then put it all back together for spin testing.
Incredible work. This is how it should have been made from the start.
I don't think the OOUK people would have a clue about working to the level of attention to detail that Stefan shows.... really is a pleasure to see Stefan's work..
I don't think the OOUK people would have a clue about working to the level of attention to detail that Stefan shows.... really is a pleasure to see Stefan's work..
Thanks Sharky, but the sad thing is that they don't even try to pay any attention. They made all the parts on a late that has a three jaw chuck with a serious runout but they use it as if it was perfect.
Anyway, I put everything back together and did a spin test. I'm completely happy with the result. Only two of the six surfaces showed a very small amount of wobble when looking at the reflections of a laser beam. This is a very severe test and I did expect to see some residuals. I would expect this amount even from the most expensive brands.
So I packed it up and it is on it's way back to Paul.
Stefan I am truly grateful for you fixing this Wynne Corrector. Your skills as a master telescope maker should never be doubted. Attention to detail is fantastic.
Like I have said to you before if you ever want to come and give a talk at the Astronomical Society of South Australia, you have the presidents blessing. I would personally love to hear a talk about how you analyse, plan, manufacture and construct these pieces of equipment.