Looks good.
2 things to think about
:
1. The flex-rocker design attached has no central pivot point to mount an encoder. If you are not going to add DSC in the future then no problem, it is a good design that transfers the weight of the altitude points directly to the ground ring. So the rocker does not need to be as beefy and it saves weight.
If you do want to use DSC then replacing the ball bearings with a central pivot bolt would make more sense. You can retro fit a central pivot point later, as I did in the 16" Tridob, but it was bit of a pain and I only did it that way because I did not plan for DSC from the beginning.
2. The ground ring in this design looks like it is not rigid enough. If you look at other flex-rocker iterations then they often have a more rigid ground ring made up of two layers of ply separated by a framework.
Either the design has to:
A) have a rigid rocker transferring the weight to teflon pads situated directly above the feet of a (flexible) groundboard, or
B) a flex-rocker with teflon pads attached to it directly underneath the altitude bearings, transferring this weight to a
rigid ground board.
If you have both a relatively flexible rocker and groundboard then you'll be in trouble, esp. with a 17.5" scope.
Examples of a flex-rocker/rigid groundboard approach are Mel Bartels' Tridob and Dan Gray's 28".
A good example of a more minimalist rigid rocker with a central pivot point and (flexible) groundboard is the Obsession UC (& my 22"). This design would not take up any more room or be much heavier than the one in the link from your post, especially if you used a triangular groundboard or cut pie-shaped pieces out of a round one.
Just food for thought................
