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OK - thanks for the compliments & kind words - It has been worth the large effort for me.
I should say also that I am not a hugely experienced machinist, hence the simplicity of the design, but I am good at building things generally. So apologies to any expert machinists on the forum - I do have a couple of friends who I have learnt much from regarding precision machining over the years.
I will now start posting a few low res pics in some sort of sequential order as promised.
A rough estimate of cost is at under 10K each - difficult to measure now with the shift in the US dollar. Remember since these are sort of protoypes and has some quite expensive off the shelf parts it is difficult to economise.
First pics:
1.The two mirror sets fresh from Star Instruments USA with Spectrum USA enhanced coating. Paul Jones was very helpful at Star Instruments.
2.The raw 6061 Al-plate for the rear cage after CNC routing. This was the minimum CNC required to ensure accuracy, concentricity and squareness etc of the rear cage components. With hindsight, I would have done more CNC at this stage - but it was good to take it slow with an 'analog' milling machine - this allowed me to be more sure of the design effectiveness as I went.
3. A preliminary assembly of the rear cage after drilling & threading holes etc. The next step from here is to 'honeycomb' mill the plate to reduce weight. A lot of work for me here.
guy
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