Aussie made

[mick pinner]

l have finally deceided to take on the challenge of making Aussie made accessories for our hobby, l am currently working on a few projects for forum members but due to time restraints with full time work things have not progressed as l would like so therefore l am going to take on the project full time, the dew shields l make have taken off quicker than l would have expected and this has given me encouragment to pursue other items.
What l would like is for any members who may like to give initial input as to what they would like to see locally produced and therefore cheaper and easier to obtain than imported articles. All ideas and suggestions are gratefully accepted, as with the shields a percentage of all sales to members will be directed back to Ice In Space in the form of donations to Mike.

[Dennis]

Hi Mick

On my list are:

• Dew shield for soon to arrive C9.25.
• Various adapters for fitting LPI, DSLR, ST7 ccd camera to 1 1/4' and 2" focusers.
• Dovetail mounting bar for Vixen mounts.
• "Scope covers.
• Dew heaters.

Hope that helps but please do not take these suggestions as a promise to purchase as I have yet to do sufficient research to establish my requirements.

I wish you every success and it would be just great to have a local supplier.

Cheers

Dennis

[slice of heaven]

Way to go Mick

All the best with it.

Another void filled for Australian and NZ astronomers.
The times are a changing.

[dhumpie]

Could we place orders now

Darren

[mick pinner]

A base range of products will have to be deceided on, obviously it is impossible to make a full list of products right from the word go, as the more wanted items make themselves sustainable then l can move on to other things, at the moment l'm looking for what you guys find you need so l can look at how to structure the first set of products that l produce.

[h0ughy (David)]

Hey mick what about a mounting bar for a refractor on the 12"

[ballaratdragons (Ken)]

To: PSI (Pinner Scientific Instruments)

Affordable EQ mounts for all the GS dobs out there! 8" to 12". There are hundreds of GS dobs in Australia alone!!

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

A side by side mounting plate for imaging and guidescope to help keep the centre of gravity lower

[acropolite (Phil)]

Still waiting for the prototype weight system....

[mick pinner]

What would you or anyone else call affordable, have had very little to do with dobs so give me some leads to what you want and l'll have a look, l've managed to arrange help from some of my mates that range from electrical engineers to aluminium fabricators so anything is possible in time.

[Jonathan]

It's good to see you take on this challenge Mick. Some of the accessories out there are so overpriced for what they are. One example is the dovetail I made for Striker's C-11 last week (and one for myself). The cost for him to get one from the USA was $220, the cost for me to get the structural grade aluminium was $21. I made 2 of them in an afternoon. If they were to be made in a very small production run at a fair profit they could be done for less than $60 each.
One suggestion I have is piggy back camera mounts. They are way overpriced from what I've seen.
Good luck with it Mick!

[ballaratdragons (Ken)]

Mick, President of PSI, 'Pinner Scientific Instruments'
Makers of Australia's leading Astronomical & Scientific Instruments

I was thinking something along the lines of 2 sizes of EQ mount. 1 for the 6'-8" GS Dobs and 1 for 10"-12" GS dobs.

By 'affordable' I mean it would be good to keep the 6"-8" model under $800 and the 10"-12" model under $1000.

It would be good if it was designed to add GoTo at an extra cost.

[mick pinner]

hi Phil, this is what l mean by having to make a decision to do this full time l expected to have the weight system finished 2 weeks ago and l expect it to be another week away.

[slice of heaven]

Originally Posted by [1ponders]

A side by side mounting plate for imaging and guidescope to help keep the centre of gravity lower

Only stumbled on that setup this week, looks acceptable but couldnt find an offsite review on performance, has anyone else?

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

I saw one in NZ (home made) at the astrophotographyfest. It was a sweet setup and made the whole mount much easier to balance.

Check this image
http://www.possumobservatory.co.nz/taupo-11.jpg

And this one for similar setup for piggyback camera work
http://www.possumobservatory.co.nz/a...-piggyback.htm

[asimov (John)]

One thing that springs to mind Mick is tube's for big reflectors. Although, there's probably not too many people out there making their own scope's these days. There may not be a big enough market for it..

When I made my 12.5" newt I tried to source big dia. tubes to no avail...I got told to try in the States. ( I'm talking 2mm ally here)The price to get a 16" dia 6' long tube from the States was laughable, so I made my own. The next trouble I had was getting a sheet big enough to roll....Unless doing a special order, you could not get a sheet big enough straight off the rack from onesteel.(or anyone else in AU) standard size is 2400mmX1200mm as you probably know.....that's why my tube ended up 15" in dia. rather than the 16" dia. which is what I wanted.. I nearly went 1.2 zinc-anneal but too heavy.

The other product lacking in AU is affordable EQ mount's! Do you have access to a reasonable size lathe? My mount is fairly close specs wise to the Parks mount that hold's their 12.5" OTA and anyone can buy one.....suffice to say I made mine at a fraction of their cost.

Sight-tube's......

Universal fitting motor-drive sub-assemblie's & complete unit's for home-built mounts such as mine..

Curved/straight spider's & holders.

Tube rings.

Primary mirror holder's.

[davidpretorius]

Hey Mick,

Would be happy to host a website and shopping cart with in built accounting system for your business venture for a couple of years to get you off the ground. The only charges would be transactions fees that the bank charges me for transactions done over the internet via credit card etc and domain registration of a name etc.

[mch62 (Mark)]

There are more than you might realize making there own scopes and over a certain size a truss assemble is the logical way to go for a tube.
lighter and stiffer and no tube currents to worry about.
Also very forgiving in the contruction stage to placement of components.
Large EQ mounts would be nice.
EQ mounts are a problem when you start talking 12" plus and longer focal ratios.
The EQ6 or G11 is not really up to the task for imaging at least and the next thing are the mounts from Anseen industries (AUS) but from memory they start at $6000.

Getting large accurate worm and wheel gears hear in the 12" plus range is a expensive exercise as well and you don't get much change out of $2000 each with motors to that you have to find a descent controller .
I even tried to get the gears made locally but gave up.
The price seams double or square over a certain size .
Hence I went the low cost friction drive route and made my own mount .

I am sure there must be others out there that would love to step up from an Alt AZ mount (Dobsonian) into EQ tracking or even ALT AZ tracking with field rotation.
I have had a few PM's asking this very question of 12" GSO owners wanting a solid EQ mount.
The thing is , it's hard to make one cheaper than the Chinese .

A nice big 6 mega pixel large format monochrome cooled CCD camera would go down well.

[davidpretorius]

my other business ventures include representing manufacturers / importers on the island nation of tasmania. companies like Flexovit (Now part of the world wide company Saint-Gobain) need to work on margins of at least 40% to cover r&d, marketing. watch selling your product too cheap, cos if all of a sudden you have to draw a wage or pay someone else and all those extra costs, there will be no more you and your great gear.

We also represent 1-11 tool boxes who import the steel and alumiumium tool boxes from china(just remembered that one of the aluminium is 1250mm wide, which is close to the length of the 12" dob i am looking at). What many engineering shops said would have cost them $500 to $700 in labour and materials, now can be imported from china, shipped around the country and sold retail $399. So no doubt the chinese can do the simple things well, but there is a huge market for specialised product that suits our market that the chinese would not even look at the qtys.

[Astroman (Andrew Wall)]

I would like to see a universal motorised focuser controller that can be computer driven or manually, with a counter of some sort so you can go back to the place where you want to go. Universal so it will adapt to almost any focuser on the market today. Or....... Build the crayford focuser or moonlite type focuser with this attached.