Thursday, January 4, 2024

i Toss and Turn About the Silliest Things

Looking at my EQ1 mount from which I may cannibalize the drive, controller, worm gear and drive, I see that only the top of the polar shaft needs access. The bottom of the polar housing should be blocked to reduce dust in the bottom of the polar housing.

So worm gear attached to the polar shaft by stainless steel set screw. Attaching the declination housing has me head scratching. Solution: make the declination housing square composite tube. Drill two holes in top of polar axis. Drill two access holes in declination housing top so I can use Allen wrenches to turn stainless steel screws into the polar axis. The declination axis still needs corrosion barriers between declination axis and bearings and also between bearings and declination housing but the outer corrosion barrier needs to be square. Easy enough. Use vertical mill to center the hole, then use Forstner bit to cut a hole the right size for the bearing corrosion barrier. Like with the polar axis housing, stainless steel bolts to hold the corrosion barriers in place in the housing

Similar approach at top of declination axis. Saddle plate held in place by two stainless screws without the complexity of access holes. Saddle plate uses Vixen dovetail.

Still need to figure out if the EQ1 gearing can be adapted to 1/2" shaft. Ditto for the declination slo-mo. I am tempted to make setting circles just because I can buy a CNC rotary table and write some code to cut them pretty easily.

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