Designing a new mount
My 3D printed telescope has a problem: it’s very wobbly. That means it’s hard to point the telescope at a planet and have it stay pointed at the planet. It also means I can’t focus it well, or take good pictures through my phone.
The telescope itself is fine, but the mount is the problem. There’s a 3D printed mount included in the files with the telescope, and I built that 3D printed mount (after trial and error and discovering pipe sizes are a lie ). However, the creator of the telescope doesn’t actually use the 3D printed mount - he has a mount made of solid wood. I don’t have a wood saw, so I can’t build that.
There’s another mount named Marci’s Mount, made by Marci, which involves using a vinyl record as a turntable so you can rotate the telescope along azimuth (very cool). It uses a sort of truss design with cross-braces to be even more stable, but you need a drill and a saw to use the turntable part. I don’t have either, which is a shame because it seems like a very cool mount.
I decided to try making my own mount. Halfway through studying that one, I discovered a third mount which is very clever and uses more rods to make a truss shape for extra stability. It also uses a clever screws-squeeze-the-plastic design to have more surface area grabbing the rods for more friction.
My plan now is to make my own mount, copying Ivan’s truss design but increasing the size of the bottom part for added stability. Hopefully that’ll make a more stable telescope!