Are there carbon fibre dovetail bars?

[RugbyRene]

Hi all,

I have a rig with a 30cm Losmandy bar top and bottom of my scope. I need this to carry all of the stuff, like mini PC, power box, guide scope etc. The problem is these dovetails and made from battleship steel and add weight to my overall rig. So in my quest to reduce weight I was wondering if there are carbon fibre Losmandy style dovetails.

Rene

[Wilso]

Hi Rene,
The Losmandy bars are solid aluminium but still quite heavy.
I’ve made a couple of Losmondy d type dovetail bars for myself using carbon fibre. They do come in lighter but without skeletonising the base as the Losmandy ones are, weight saving is only 20-25 % from memory.
They do look nice though!

[lazjen]

Just get a bigger mount. :)

[Startrek]

Good advice
If your trying to shave off 0.1 to 0.5kg payload here and there with mounting bars and the like on your existing mount , sounds like your existing mount is just about maxed out with payload so the obvious next step is to upgrade

[RugbyRene]

I was hoping to avoid that, but it might be the way to go as I want to set-up a dual imaging rig. I want to have two Esprit 100EDs, one with a mono camera and the other with a colour camera so I can shoot both in the one imaging session. They'll be sitting on the one mount so it will be carrying 30kg+. My AZEQ6 just won't cut it.

[lazjen]

Could you mount the scopes so they act as counterbalance for each other and then require no counterweights?

[RugbyRene]

Only in az mode. Adrianno from Testar did show me a 10 Micron mount he just got in with a 150kg load capacity. Better start saving.:rofl:

[toc]

I made my own from wood...

[glend]

Agreed, don't skimp on your mount. Do it right. Invest in a proper mount for the job, say an EQ8 (50 kg capacity), or CGX-L (34kg imaging capacity). Cost will be over $6k, but you get a heavy duty tripod with the CGX, the EQ8 does not come with a tripod or pier.

Any imaging setup carrying that much weight shoild be on a solid pier with proper footing, imho.

And invest in a proper side by side mounting system, they are available.