Here's the Losmandy DUP dovetail plate -- where "U" stands for universal, and the collection of different locations sizes, and types of holes really shows you what is intended to handle -- including attaching your Klingon Death Ray projector:
Here's the other side, which is both relieved so that you can put various nuts on it, and I suspect to reduce weight.
Here are the anodized tubes for the trusses from Moonlite:
Here are the blocks that hold everything together:
The balls go into the blocks, and you bolt the cylinder end into the poles, after you have cut them to the correct length for your particular telescope.
I was able to buy black oxide 6-32 screws to hold the blocks into the lower and upper cages, but I could not seem to find black oxide coated washers or nuts, so my wife did them in flat black spray paint:
Here's Big Bertha removed from her mount. She weighs just under 62 pounds.
Since I had to remove the turnbolts, guy wires, and the aluminum tubing and channels, my wife suggested that we repaint the exteriors of the lower and upper cages:
This was a surprisingly strenuous four hours of work. I also made a bunch of 1", 1/8" diameter steel pins that will be used to provide a flat base on the tube for the truss connector blocks.
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