Dave's SolidWorks Virtual 16" f5.6 Tri-Dob

(Version 2.0 in the making)

This page was last updated Saturday, 14. April 2007 01:40 PM -0700

The whole enchilada.

the ground ring

 the flex rocker (top & bottom view)

altitude center trunnion, stepper motor & bracket and bearing mounts (and ball & socket truss clamps)

entire lower section view of the scope

inside the mirror box (collimation frame, 12-point PLOP designed cell with rectangles, silicone pads and collimation assemblies)

(looks like two of the machine bolts have defaulted to a much larger size! SolidWorks does weird stuff sometimes, but it's probably just me!)

upper end of the OTA. The blue spacer is Styrofoam. Most likely will replace with short pieces of aluminum tubing. Note the light cone from the primary for accurate placement of optical components. This SolidWorks software is slick.

In real life the Styrofoam was a disaster. It failed to hold up under the forces required to assemble the endring. In other words, it compressed at the joints where the wire spider supports were mounted. Ultimately, I reduced the endring to a single section of 0.5 inch plywood. It works great. I also eliminated at least 1.5 pounds from the endring by replacing the ball and socket joints with a simple aluminum capture plate and a bolt through open aluminum tubes, capturing everything with a simple hand nut. Not shown/modeled here is the light baffle from the original version 1.0 of this scope.

focuser (I recently rebuilt my first Crayford that I donated to my brother's 8" Celestron dob.) We learned that instead of the two cylindrical nylon bearing supports for the focuser shaft, a single rectangle of delrin-like material in it's place works MUCH better. We didn't have nylon on hand, but found some plastic stuff that worked amazingly well in a jam.)

Secondary holder and mirror. (The secondary mirror was by far the most difficult part of the telescope to model in SolidWorks!)

upward looking view of the endring of the OTA. I'm not sure yet if the eyebolt/vertical backplate holder idea will work with the wire spider. I know the tubing scenario I'm currently using works well (i.e. no flexure at the eyebolts themselves).

Feel free to e-mail me at: unspamsmithersscope@yahoo.com (remove the 'unspam')