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HOMEBUILT 6" F15 REFRACTOR AND MOUNT

By Astrochef in Technology > Science 82,236 243 40 Featured

Published Aug. 3, 2011 Download Favorite

By Astrochef About: I am a Chef of 15 years and an astronomer for the past 20. I build my own
stuff wherever possible. I have a lovely supportive wife and two beautiful girls. More
Follow About Astrochef »

Hello fellow Instruct-ables...  What better way to celebrate space than to look at it through
a really big telescope? I have been an ATM for quite a while and this is my latest project, a
big refracting telescope on a big mount. 

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Step 1: Gathering Parts

The mount is made from mostly easy to nd scrap parts I found on line. I spent a lot of time
looking for scrap pieces that were close to sizes I needed until I found that the metal
merchants would cut pieces to size for pretty cheap. I used common power tools such as a
small drill press, router, circular saw and chop saw. Working with aluminum is a lot like
working with very hard woods, the cutting feels the same but slower.

The chassis is made of 1/2" sheet aluminum. The bearings are pillow block bearings. The
Main(RA) shaft is 2-5/8" diameter aluminum and the smaller(dec) shaft is 1-1/6" steel. The
large
Homebuilt worm
6" F15 gear
Refractor andwas purchased
Mount by Astrochef cheaply
Follow from an astronomy website.  Download Favorite

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Step 2: Routing Aluminum

This is a step that I thought about for a good long while. An equatorial mount has to have
some adjustment for the angle of altitude in order to track properly. The angle for your
location is your latitude, Where I am the mount needs to be set at 42deg. I decided to make
the angle adjustable about 5 deg either way. To make these small arcs I used a circle-cutter
attachment on my router and made quick 1/8" passes until I cut through each side of the
chassis. 

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Step 3: Basic Chassis Assembly

I trimmed the mounting tabs from the large pillow block bearings and ground down the
sides with an angle grinder. After some drilling and some tapping, I bolted the base chassis
up...

I added a brace and tapped a hole for an adjustment bolt. Turning this bolt allows the angle
to be adjusted then clamped down when it's right. 

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Step 4: The RA Shaft

My large pillow block bearings were sold to me as 3"ID however when they arrived they
were closer to 2-5/8"ID. I was able to nd 2-5/8" aluminum cylinder and had it pressed into
a 6" dia 1" thick disk. Pressing the shaft in is a very strong and stiff junction but is a job for
a metal shop with a press, My local machine shop charged me $20.

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Step 5: The Dec Shaft

I had the 1-1/16" dia x 24" long dec shaft pressed into a 2-1/2" x 2" x10" Aluminum bar.
For the correct alignment of the tube, this unit has to be trued on a lathe. Another $20 to
the machine shop. 

I felt like Thor when I carried this into the house.

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Step 6: The Dec Shaft Assembly

The dec shaft rides in two 1-1/16"ID pillow block bearings mounted to a 1/2" aluminum
plate which is bolted to the RA shaft. I added a 4"wx14"l aluminum bar to mount the tube
rings. 

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Step 7: Mounting of the Large Drive Gear

In a big scope the accuracy of the tracking is directly tied to the size of the worm gear. Big
worm gear means smaller errors. A big worm gear also needs a smaller drive motor. This
gear is clamped between two circles of HDPE which is actually cutting board material. I
routed two 12" circles to act as clutch plates as well as a smaller 6" donut for the gear to
ride on. This assembly is clamped tight via two threaded shafts. This clutch arrangement
allows the tube to be moved anywhere while the motor turns for effortless pointing and
tracking.

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Step 8: Worm Drive Assembly

The worm drive is built from pieces of aluminum bar cut from left over material. The worm
gear came from another smaller drive and happened to t. The shaft rides in oilite bushings.
Gear slack is taken up by a screw that presses the shaft from the side and prevents lateral
movement of the gear. Each piece of this unit took a couple of tries because to avoid
binding, some precision was involved. By precision I mean drilling holes over and over until
nally the shaft stopped binding! 

The motor is a synchronous timing motor which runs at a set speed from household
voltage. These are used in older or simple telescope drives because it uses the frequency of
your house voltage to keep accurate speed. Adjustments of the speed can be accomplished
by the use of a square-wave frequency generator, a simple circuit that allows you to speed
up or slow down the motor for tracking. 

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Step 9: Tripod Hub

The tripod hub is made from two disks of aluminum bolted to three leg mount bars. The top
of the hub is machined at. The bolt hods the chassis to the hub. 

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Step 10: Oak Tripod Legs

The tripod legs are built up from oak ooring boards discarded as scrap by a neighbor. They
are as long as the shortest piece so abou 48"l.

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Step 11: Mount Assembled

All the different assemblies together as a mount head. 

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Step 12: Finished Mount

After some ddling, re tting, stiffening sanding and painting, the nished mount....

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Step 13: The Heart and Soul....

Ah, now it's time for the cool stuff... The Objective!  This lens was made by Istar Optical, at
the time a relatively new manufacturer of telescope optics. The lens has shown itself to be
an excellent performer, especially for the price. Currently the objective in cell costs about
$515.  

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Step 14: The Tube...

The tube is a section of aluminum tube made by Hastings Irrigation. I had to special order
the size as shipping an 8' l tube costs as much as the tube itself...

The focuser is a Synta refractor focuser painted blue for looks. 

The interior is baf ed via 7 knife-edge baf es spaced 12" apart. The baf e assembly was
built from plans I drew of the optical path. The baf es are kept out of the light path by
about 1/4" or so.

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Step 15: Objective Cell Mounting

The objective needs to be mounted in a collimatable ring. This ring was routed from three
pieces of HDPE drilled and tapped for three push-pull screw arrangements.

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Step 16: Sliding Dew Shield

Traveling with a 9'l tube is tough, traveling with an 8' tube is much easier, ts right in the
mini-van. To make things easier the dewshield slides over the objective to shield the lens
from stray light.

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Step 17: How Does It Perform?

This refractor is an achromat which normally would not be suitable for photography. Due to
it's large focal ratio (f15) and long focal length(2276mm) this scope is a superb planetary
performer.  This is a photo of Saturn taken with a Celestron Neximager, a webcam-based
imaging camera. This photo is a stack of 1000 frames in Registax. There is a white blob
which is a storm imaged on the surface of Saturn from 3 blocks outside of Chicago! 

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40 Comments

jwoodward8 5 years ago Reply

Does it work

X Astrochef (author) 6 years ago Reply

8 WOW! Thanks everyone who voted! I am proud to be a part of such an active building community.
Thank you Instructables and Celestron, I'll put the scope to good use!

Hopefully my wife will let me spend a little more time in the shop now!

Sean

Mechanic2011 6 years ago Reply

For building a telescope:

Do you know of anyone that has used a section of the heavy Green plastic sewer pipe which is
available in diameters starting at 10 or 12 inches for this?
I have found the white PVC pipe locally that is 8 inches approx. in diameter.
Anything 6 inches or less is available in the plumbing supply / home improvement stores .

The problem is that once you get to the green commercial PVC piping the gets buried underground a
ways , it also gets very heavy as the wall thickness is quite thick as it is schedule 30 or 40 so it won't
crush when buried in the ground.
The Blue PVC underground piping is for water mains and has an even thicker wall on it than the green
sewer piping as it needs to be schedule 80 and be able to take the municipal water pressure
continuously .

5 replies F
X georgeATM 6 years ago Reply
8 Beautiful scope! I am surprised you went with oak on the tripod legs. I Built an 8" f/15 refractor and
used all aluminum except for the alt-az box on top of the tripod.

6 replies F
jmacdonald6 6 years ago Reply

Very nice work indeed bro. Congratulations. But I found those instructions are so imprecise to the
inexperienced (myself) that I could as easily end up with a vertical lawn mower or letter opener for
giraffes. Not only that, this project could be impossible in many other countries: one bemoans e.g. in
the UK the lack of DIY venues -- of junkyards, 'local machine shop guy', spare materials, shops,
suppliers, space, of ANY PERSON within 1000 miles 'discarding' any hardwood in size and number
bigger than a single chopstick. Thus MY assessment: life is tough in the US now but appreciate that
you don't need to crop your own talents as in Europe. Keep on building and posting!

1 reply F
pcgate 6 years ago Reply

just plain ole wow. good job.

raul38 6 years ago Reply

Thanks for share your excellent works

| spark master 6 years ago Reply

Any scope builders on LI (nassau cty) that would like parts to build a small Galileo telescope? My
friend has 2 3 in parts and one complete (maybe he will parrt with it don't know). They are the standard
cherapo scopes so you could make 1 perhaps from the parts or take two and make really big
binoculars (yeah that ain't happening cause the parts to make them cost more then buying a pair).

let me know and perhpas it will be for you. 2 scopes and crappy needs reapirs tripods. free for
experimentals on LI.

Drop me a line through instructables and I will put you in touch. These will be free, but you gotta go
get'm

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