After spending my time browsing this forum and not contributing anywhere near as much as I should, I have decided to finally post some pics of my latest scope build. It is based around a 12" f5.2 Suchting primary.
The first pics are of the last build, finished a few years ago.
Obviously a scope that stands near 6 foot tall has limitations, even if it is spit in 2 pieces, so I made the decision to convert to a truss style design.
Part of the original tube was retained as it was made to accommodate the Novak primary mirror cell and the rest of the scope was constructed around this.
The trusses are held in place via split blocks of tassie oak left over from a deck I built. Tension on these is controlled by a cam action bike axle clamp. The spider has been constructed from some Al angle but flexed a bit and lost collimation on elevation change and has been replaced with an astrosystems unit.
The connections to the UTA are a modification from the many variants I saw online. They too are tensioned via a cam action bolt.
Due to the lack of following any formal plan as such, the altitude bearings were required to be somewhat oversized (balance issue). They are covered in dimpled Al and ride on teflon from the original scope.
The whole shebang requires a little collimation upon re-assembly but it's nothing out of the ordinary.
If I was doing It again I would construct more of a plan in the beginning to fit the UTA inside the rocker box when dissassembled and make the altitude bearings of a lower profile.
I pestered all the local bike shops until I found 1 that had enough in the right lengths to do the job. The front axle worked out to be the closest to what I required. In the end I had to cut some to length and tap a thread onto the naked shaft.
As it turns out though, I don't disassemble it as much as I though I would need to.
