Back from vacation, and a killer end of month at the ol' optic shop, now it's time to get back to the telescope stuff.
Wish I'd made it to RTMC, hopefully next year......maybe this thing will be done by THEN.
Anyway, I've spent the last month working on my split-ring equatorial mount for my current 10" f4.8 Newt. project. Based on a external ring gear from a 2-side lapping machine (29" OD, 27.5" ID with gear teeth on the ID), this should work well. With my current allotment of approx. one hour a nite 2-3 times during the week, and 3-4 hrs over the week-end it seems endless.
But its finally coming together, and I wouldn't mind some second opinion on the design. But.... I've done the engineering with a CAD program(TurboCad), which uses a proprietary file extension (.tcw), but can convert to other CAD formats. I could encode and post via e-mail, but how many people could use it?? Any one familiar with converting CAD st uff to gif, or jpeg??(Non- telescope stuff-----e-mail me if any input.)
Any way now that I have this CAD stuff (it's wonderful to use) I've also been drawing prints for the types of grinding and polishing machines we use at the shop, as I've noticed more interest in this lately and would love to figure out a way to post them here besides redrawing them in a paint program.
Besides that still trying to figure out how to polish my silicon mirror with pitch.....tropical pitch hasn't worked on the first two tries(still trying, Bratislav), ... trying a different type of pitch called Cycad. It may be like Trinidad Pitch which is basically asphalt as opposed to sap
More later. 8+)
Bill Marriott btk@ix.netcom.com