Lightbridge Azimuth Encoder Modification.

[Doc]

Have finally got round to installing my Azimuth encoder and digital readout. The long bolts you see will be replaced with smaller ones to make the job look neater but it was all I had at the time. Also some spacers will be fitted as well.

The shaft is 6mm and I drilled into a 8mm Allen bolt to a depth of about 10mm. I then drilled and tapped a 4mm hole in the

side to accomodate a grub screw to hold the shaft.

As long as the centre bolt is secured tightly and there is a little play for the lower board to rotate smoothly it has turned out to be very accurate.

I marked the floor and the base board with a little pencil mark and used a set square to get it exactly straight. Turned the scope

through exactly 360 degrees while monitering the digital readout and the pencil marks exactly lined up when the readout came to 360 degrees.

The lead is a little small. I have tried to locate some male and female plugs so an extention can be built but to no avail, they are special ones for this encoder and the suppllier will not pass on any details.

So am now going to mount it on my next project which is a laptop/eyepiece table connected to lower cradle assembly.

Cannot wait to see if it works at night.

I now have a Azimuth encoder and a Wixey for the alltitude side of things.

[Doc]

I forgot to add for the cost of just £32 it's quite a cheap price to pay for half a push to.

[Sam]

Looks great Doc, you've given me some ideas for strengthening my Dob base for the 16" as well from your pics.

[Demo johnny]

Hi, Can you put the pics back up that are missing. I would love to do this but cant get my head round how to fix the encoder.

Cheers

[Joseki]

As far as I can see Wixey and Gemred rotary encoders with remote displays are not available, at the moment anyway. (Ok on Amazon you can still buy one, but for £90). After Christmas there was a big reduction in the Gemred price (to about £25) - which I didn't see until too late, presumably to shift stock but now nothing. Axminster have now removed that item from their webpages, for example.