Sydney engineering shop recommendations-pier project

[DJT]

K
Am really struggling finding places that sell piers locally, that i would buy..Am also not that good with hands so won't be doing a diy thing especially as wife has only grudgingly given me prime south facing location for a pier in current garden redesign, so it has to be pretty..I don't do diy pretty..

Specifically, I am looking for a craftsman in Sydney who could knock up a pier design similar to this, currently manufacturer in uk, sold as an anti vibration pier, but pretty nifty and proving difficult to get shipped so not guilty about leveraging concepts

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FrJziVWXbo&sns=em

Having said that, comments on this design would also be interesting. What he says seems to make sense to me.

If anyone can recommend someone they have used locally to knock up a pier please shout out. I can cobble up designs but..

[John0z]

The link you provided is quite interesting - it certainly raises a few questions about the current piers that many amateur astronomers are using. I have been considering putting in a permanent pier and I want to thank you for bringing this to my attention.

There are engineering shops around the Sydney area who should be able to make up a pier to your specifications, but I don't have any that I have personally dealt with. I did get a quote for some gears to be made by a place in Baulkham Hills, but the pricing was a little high for my liking so I decided to try to make my own - spent lots of money but still don't have my gears, so maybe buying them to start with wasn't a bad idea. However, having all this equipment now means that I am starting to make more things out of metal.

[strongmanmike]

A 1m X 1m X 1m concrete block is not a metric ton, it is not water :rolleyes: A 1m cube of hardened concrete is about 2.4 metric tons. They repeat this error a few times in the video actually :shrug:

What other errors are there :question:

The piers do look good though and I am sure a local machine/fab shop would have no problems constructing one similar if you provide them with a reasonable drawing. I would expect since it is a custom one off job the price will not be super cheap.

Mike

[avandonk]

The main thing with a pier is to have no resonances that can be driven by your mounts motors.

The only thing sensible in the video is the taper of the ribs as this will make the the whole assembly have a low Q. In laymans terms it means that all frequencies will have an equal and low chance of exciting the pier to any sort of resonance.


It is not about absolute rigidity! It is about damping resonances.

As for the concrete into the ground you only need to go as deep as any earth movement will make your polar alignment change.

My concrete pier base is about 400mm square and goes down nearly two meters to bedrock.

See here

http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=24138&highlight=rocket+pier&page=3

These blokes have the correct ideas for the wrong reasons.

My pier cost me $160 made by a local metal fabrication shop.

Bert

[Marke]

This is the pier I had made by a local welder http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=87120, if you just ring a few metal fab / welding places they should be able to do what you need at half the commercial price . They will need just a diagram and specs if lucky they may have the metal laying around as scap and then its even cheaper .
Mark

[Poita]

I'm getting a pier fabricated locally soon, maybe I can get two done at the same time?

[strongmanmike]

Yes that looks rather good Mark :thumbsup:

Mike

[Marke]

Mate I wish I had you around when I was trying to get it home not to mention puting it up on the bolts :P

[Paul Haese]

Yes a few errors there in the video. The talk about isolation of piers is odd because I don't think they understand that if you isolate the pier from the surrounding concrete or flooring then there is no vibration passed through.

For pier construction I decided on a similar design to theirs, although I just thought it looked right and knew the girts would add to rigidity. I had no idea that other firms were producing piers that looked similar, which is a happy coincidence. My pier (http://paulhaese.net/BuildinganObservatory.html) is 8" in diameter (ID) with 13mm thick walls and stands 1.3m. I got it fabricated by a metal fabrication firm locally and am sure you will find someone in Sydney who does this sort of work. I had to do a few simple drawings and tell them the thickness I wanted for bottom plate and pipe wall. It cost around $700 but it is very well fabricated. My first pier I had to explain what I wanted the pier for and why it had to be so rigid. These guys were intrigued but produced a good pier on both occassion.

I think you would be in your best interests to go to the work shop with your drawings and show them what you are thinking and talk with them for a bit (without boring them with the details). I found this worked really well and gave them an understanding of what I wanted to achieve.

There does not seem to be anyone in Australia that specifically makes piers, but there are plenty of good engineering firms that make all sorts of steel products.

[Peter.M]

See I was going to suggest Pauls design but I couldnt find the words to explain it. The floor is not attached to the pier or the concrete base so no vibrations from movement are going to affect the scope.

For a minute in the video I thought they were trying to say your own personal gravity would change the scope position! I dont know why I got this feeling just one of those weird things I guess.