Friday, April 13, 2018

built alt-az base

Worked on the barn door tracker, taking steps to add the altitude-azimuth base, now that I have figured out how to make it work...

It's elegant, I think, the pivot away from the hinges and the azimuth adjuster completely out of the way.

Attached the hinges to the bottom (large rectangular) plate of the BDT proper. Removed the motor. It will need to move outboard...

I'm running out of ½" number 6 brass screws... Cut down some longer screws.

altitude plate and eyebolt added to tracker

Attached the top plate of the alt-az to the hinges. After a couple of attempts, installed the altitude adjuster using an eye bolt, t-nut, and mending plate. Had to ensure clearance between the finder scope and the triangular moving plate of the BDT. Locked two nuts on the eye bolt just so it can't go astray. It works great!

azimuth plates pivoting on large bolt

After clamping the alt-az plates together, I bore a 3/8" hole for the pivot bolt. Installed the bolt with washers and locked the two nuts together. It too works great! Smoother than I anticipated.

Determined where to place the azimuth adjuster parts. At first I thought I had a new problem with interference with the hinges; when I realised I could put the L-bracket in a different orientation and between the sliding plates, I knew I could move forward. Notched the bottom tile plate for the L-bracket.

Tore the base apart and glued the slippery tile pieces to the respective boards with Home-bond Solvent Contact Cement. Left it to cure under several mount counterweights...

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