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So far a equatorial platform has a reasonable cost if it is done in a DIY fashion. My first equatorial platform cost approximately $150 to build. That is quite reasonable and as you have seen from my Astro photography images they produce quite a reasonable job. Unfortunately they have not been up to produce a good long-term tracking for deep sky, mostly because the motor ratios were not low enough and I was getting a lot of stalling.
My new design is a lot more robust, smaller and incorporates aluminium radii and I plan to install stepper motors.
I hope one day that I will be able to sell these as kit so that people can put them together. This unfortunately will take a little bit of time as I am still wearing a sling from my shoulder surgery and I cannot progress any further than I have at the moment. I think if it is done right and effectively the cost could be right down.
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