8" Telescope Making: Remember to Measure your Owls
8" mount v1 complete!
After several days of designing, 3D printing, and experiencing the joys of my favorite telescope related activity, hacksawing through metal, I managed to assemble a complete mount! Design-wise, I had to replace 0.5" screws with 0.75" screws in a few places because the redesigned EMT tubes were too close together. The telescope uses only 0.5" screws, so it would have been nice to match, but it’s fine for an one-off. I also removed the horizontal bar across the front of the telescope when breaking the top part into two parts; I might need to figure out how to add that back if they’re wobbly.
However, this mount has a few problems. Firstly, It’s slightly too short. Because this Leavitt telescope design was downloaded from the internet, I had to measure its width using a tape measure to load into my CAD program as a reference. I measured it around 1/4" too short - turns out it’s actually 29.8 cm wide, meaning my mount has a gap between where the scope should go. Also, I managed to forget a screw socket (which I can fix by using longer screws), and it looks like there’s a bit of wobble. Maybe I’ll do a version 2.