Equipment - Mounts
|
Takahashi EM10b MOUNT This is a German Equatorial mount by Takahashi, with computer control of my own design (Aka OnStep). It's a fairly light-weight mount and can only handle loads of up to 15 LBS for visual purposes or around 10 LBS for imaging. I bought this as a used mount and it was in pretty sad shape. I tore it down and carefully reassembled with new grease and new sleeve bearings. I'm still considering machining new nylon thrust bearings... I suspect that wear and tear over the years has warn them down and this causes some excess play in the movements. But, it's performing adaquately for now and I'll save that for a future project. The OnStep system provides an LX200 like computer control interface and drives stepper motors to slew the mount to target objects. The conversion to OnStep was done without any modifications that couldn't be reversed. I acquired two 50:1 48 step gear motors that are dimensionally similar to the stock motors. I would have perfered something with about half the steps/arc-sec but these do the job. I protoboarded the stepper driver modules (DRV8825) and wired directly into the Seeduino Mega. This was much more difficult than the other OnStep builds I've done due to the strict size requirement. Everything is mounted on one proto board to minimize size so it fits inside the motor/electronics bay of the mount. Adding GoTo to this mount costing me around $130 - $50 for the motors, $45 for the Seeduino Mega, $10 for the BT, and $15 for the DRV8825's, and $10 in misc. hardware and connectors. |
|
|
Losmandy G11 MOUNT This is a German Equatorial mount by Losmandy, with computer control of my own design (Aka OnStep). It is a much more substantial mount than the LXD75 and can handle loads of up to 60 LBS for visual purposes or around 35 LBS for imaging. The OnStep system provides an Autostar like computer control interface and drives stepper motors to slew the mount to target objects. |
 |
|
LXD75 MOUNT This is a German Equatorial mount with computer control (Meade Autostar #497 pdf) manufactured by Meade. It has ball bearings on both axies and can handle loads of up to 30 LBS for visual purposes or around 20 LBS for imaging. I added dovetail mounting plates to the above telescope OTA's so that either could be attached quickly to the mount. I also made custom brass rests curved to match the diameter of the 8" SCT tube assembly to the 8" SCT's mounting plate (from scopestuff.com) |
 |
Powered by