Monorail, way not?

[miki63au]

G'day all,
In the agony I'm going true (make the 12.5" F15 DK Cass. lighter),
I saw a couple of monorail Cass. on the net.
The other option is do like the Mewlon .
Not sure about the aluminum tube... Or perhaps carbon-fiber?:screwy:
Or no tube at all. :D
Just two 500mm Losmandy dovetail coupled in the middle, one end is the primary in a adjustable cell + focuser and the central baffle,
the other end is the secondary only... The center of gravity is close to
the shaft, low inertia, no tube current etc. And I can get away with a
lighter mount (EQ6 ?).
At the current state the tube is 35kg!!!:scared:
The primary mirror is only 7.5kg and the secondary is less than 0.5kg ;)
So a monorail would be around 15kg, with low inertia.
Is there someone had any experiment with monorails?
Thanks,
Miklos.

[GaryF]

Hello,

This is my first post here - I hope it's okay to jump in.

I shot this last year at a show here in the US. Not exactly a monorail and I can't say anything about the performance but it was very rigid and maybe not too hard to make something similar. (I can send a higher res picture)

Regards,

Gary Fuchs
Pennsylvania, USA

[joshman]

i like the design of that, simple, effective, efficient, i wonder how it performs with stray light getting on the mirror. that wouldn't be too hard to make yourself

[GaryF]

The vendor claimed stray light wasn't a problem with that long tube off the primary.

Gary Fuchs
Pennsylvania, USA

[miki63au]

Hi, this is what in my mind.
Miklos.