Quote:
Originally Posted by blink138
ted you are a veritable font of optical goodness ha ha!
now listen ted i broke out in a cold sweat because i had never turned my bobs knobs collimation screws up until a few nights ago so attempting to remove the corrector will surely give me an instant anxiety attack!
regards
pat
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I have some shots of the Hotech board
here that might help. Accurate registration of the board is 99% of the work. You should spend a lot of time in making sure everything is co-registered and square or your scope will end up in a worst state of collimation.
If you have rotated your secondary in respect to the primary you should have a look at the back of the secondary glass. There is usually a line from center to edge. There is the same line at the back of your primary which should point at 3 o'clock looking from the front of the scope so opposite the focuser knob.
If you are worried about which side is in or out when you've removed the corrector, there should also be a '>' mark on the edge pointing towards the primary, so the peak is pointing towards the inside of the scope. The correctors are only figured on one side, so the curved surface is usually out. In some rare instances both sides were figured. Although I was also told it doesn't really matter which side is in or out it's best to keep the original orientation. More importantly there should be an etch on the corrector glass that should also point at 3 0'clock. That's really important. Finally the corrector retaining ring is just 'touch' only. DO NOT tighten up. There are 12 screws and the retaining ring acts as a flange. You can apply a lot of pressure on the glass over the whole ring surface if you're not careful and break it with changes in temperature when the scope goes out in the cold and back indoors. The glass needs room to expand or contract.
So to recap, if you remove anything: Secondary, corrector and primary marks are all facing the 3 o'clock position (opposite focuser knob)