We've had over a week of shocking weather here in Brisbane, so I spent a few days in the shed working on my latest project, an open frame refactor.
The 120mm refractor has been a good performer with my Combo Quark, but I discovered a few shortcomings.
It's big and bulky, it really moves about in the wind, I live on the coast so the wind gets up around mid morning and buffets the optical tube.
I have an internal ERF and have noticed the optical tube gets quite warm after a couple of hours, I think that internal air convection inside the tube
may be downgrading its performance.
I think an open frame refractor might cure all of the above .
I had some 12mm thick Aluminum plate in the shed so I spun up 3 flanges and spaced them out with some 30 x15 x2mm Aluminium box section rails.
As the frame has only 3 rails at 120 degrees apart the structure is very rigid, but light. the complete setup withTZ4 , Quark and camera weighs 6.4 kg.
My little lathe was at its capacity turning the flanges, I just had to take my time.
The frame was extended 150mm from the original tube to compensate for the TZ4 focal extender , I have 2 ERF's a 2" 7nm ha filter with a slight tilt and a Player One ERF mounted on the front of the TZ4.
My Camera is cooled with a magnetic cell phone cooler , that is vibration free.
I haven't had a chance to test this new setup yet due to the weather, meanwhile here are a few pictures
