Below are photographs of my Equatorial Platform
With very generous help from Howard Banich and from Tom Osypowski, I was able
to build an equatorial platform (single axis) for my f/6 Dobsonian. Here
is the finished product (I didn't take photographs during the building
process). Thanks, Howard! Tom!
Please feel free to drop me an e-mail
if you have any questions or comments. I'll do what I can to offer any
assistance.
This is a view of the north bearings. The black object sticking out of the
front right is the quartz motor. I've built a wooden "roll-bar"
type of frame around the motor to protect it from damage. I used this
design to keep from raising the platform any higher from the ground. The
motor extends through the bottom of the frame, but is not in much danger of
damage as long as you are careful where you set the platform down (i.e. not on a
rock!). (Click to enlarge)
Here is the south bearing view from the top. Consider the point of the
"cone" to be several inches behind the back of the equatorial
platform. The three Teflon pads are spaced over the bearings for
stability. The black stain and the circular Teflon pads are styles that I
adopted from Howard Banich's efforts in this area. (Click to enlarge)
Open up the hood and this is what you get! This shows some of the
platform's top baseboard ribbing for strength and the bearings on the ground
board. The quartz motor I purchased from Tom Osypowski is in the upper
left side of the ground board with a black plastic sleeve. The white
circle on the north-east side of the ground board is a circle bubble for
leveling. The aluminum knob in behind the south bearing is to lift the
south foot up and down so as to get a level setting when observing. I use
wood blocks to get the east-west level. (Click to enlarge)
For perspective, I've added a ruler to this photograph. This is an
18" ruler for scale. (Click to enlarge)
Note: Chuck Shaw and David Shouldice's equatorial platform web sites
(use a search engine as web sites tend to move around) were very useful in the
design of this platform. Thanks to these guys for leading the way.
