CAT
Engineering

Computer And Telescope
 
 

Me:

The making of ...

Fig 1: Putting the base together
The flange used to be a part of a medical vision system. Or at least I think it was. I found it on a junkyard. It had lots of optics, a big photomultiplier tube ( broken) and electronics. The lenses were worthless for astronomical purposes.
The mechanics are top quality.
 
 


Fig 2: Smoothing the circumference

The telescope base consists of 2 disks on top of each other. The top one has bearings keeping it centered round the flange and 3 bearing assuring easy rolling on the bottom disk. The bottom  disk is made of bakelite. This material is waterproof, very stable and hard. Expensive kitchen- and bathroom closets are made of it.
 


Fig 3 : Smoothing
 


Fig 4: Cutting teeth

Adopted to Bob Norgard's idea on cutting teeth I'm using a M6 tap f resulting in 354 teeth along the circumference of the aluminum flange.
 


Fig 5: Teeth cutting set-up
The tap is put into the drilling machine. The flange can rotate freely on the support pushed firmly against the ball bearing.
 
 


Fig 6: Cutting teeth detail.
About 50 turns of the flange were needed to cut the teeth to an acceptable depth.

To be continued ....
 

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