The Molly Project Continues…

Things are coming together.  I’ve recently painted everything that needed painting.  If I had to do it over, I think I would have gone with stain but it’s too late to fret over that and I can’t rebuild something until I build it first. The red is a little darker than some of these pictures. More like the last picture than the second.

The first picture shows the mirror cell resting on the threaded rods that will be used for collimation. In the center of the cell is a fan and at the edge is a push button toggle to turn it on/off. The fan will be used to help the mirror reach equilibrium. I decided early on to go with a simple cell with 18 felt pads in the best locations for support.

 

Next, we see the 16″ (or 0.4 meter) mirror safely in the box resting on the cell.  You can see the three collimation knobs that will allow me to collimate from the top rather than the bottom. Hidden behind the knob on the right is the push button from the other picture that will let me turn the fan on or off.

 

Finally, for this post, is the upper tube assembly with the secondary mirror and spider.  Next I need to attach the board for the focuser and focuser itself.  After that I can place the mirror box above and the UTA below on  jig to determine the optimal separation and from that the length of the truss rods.

I’m hoping for first light in about a month.

The Molly Project continues…

The custom made secondary holder and spider should be here by month end.
I have 7 1.25” aluminum poles, one as a spare. May get one more if I have the opportunity to avoid cost of shipping.
Here is a prototype truss connector I made yesterday plus another picture showing it attached to a simulated upper ring with a cam latch. I’m hoping that will work, one of the scopes I’ve studied uses them and they will be very convenient. Finally a shot of all six. You can tell they are handmade and each is unique. Later I may revisit this but for now I’ve had enough of working with aluminum.  Fortunately I have enough aluminum channel (barely) to redo them.

The 0.4m (16″) compact dob, code named Molly, continues

Here we have a simple plywood disk mirror cell in the mirror box. there are 18 felt pads at the calculated points for support of the mirror.
Here I’ve cut out two 30″ diameter altitude bearings and matching rocker box sides from a single 2’x4’by3/4″ sheet of plywood.

Here we see the altitude bearings attached to the mirror box, resting on the rocker box with the mirror resting on its cell.

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