Wedgy

[Nessy]

Hi - does anyone know of any book/online-plans for a wedge?

I have access to a laser profiler/metal cutting company and thought I may give it a go....

:0)

Chris

[barkis]

Chris, I am not sure if you will get a positive result here, but you could try A guy called Arthur at Ambermile Engineering. He makes Super Wedges I believe, and he may have some drawings that might be of use. I guess you would need to tell him you are making a one off for yourself. You can only ask anyway, if he can't help you, he may know where else you can try.

If you do a search on line for Ambermile Enginering, you will find his email I am sure. Or perhaps someone on SGL knows him well. I take it it is for your Celestron.

Good Luck. Ron.

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

While Arthur is a top bloke, he might draw the line at disclosing a set of drawings for his livelihood. :shock: I'm sure he'll be able to help in some way though.

If you do get stuck, I'm going to have a think about this anyway. I need to brush up on the Autocad.

Kaptain Klevtsov

[Nessy]

Thanks guys, I would feel a bit cheeky asking someone who makes them for a living for plans....

I will hunt around the web and see what I can muster - it's a pretty advanced setup I have access to so will see what I can find out. In theory could end up with a custom, heavy duty wedge for £10.....

KK - if you do have a play and fancy me making one up for you then let me know....

The hunt begins....

[Nessy]

Adjusting....

OK - I think I am going to go along the lines of the APT Astro with regard to adjusting angle (lat) but what about Azimuth. On the APT it looks like a rotating base plate. One standard wedges, I can't see any such device....how do these work and how important is it (i.e. how fine does it need to be)? I dont fancy having to try fine aligning by moving the tripod!

Thanks for any info....

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

Chris, for my HEQ5 I used two plates bolted together with oversized bolt holes and washers. I can remove one bolt, loosen the other and use a bar through the now empty bolt hole to edge the Az. until its good. Once its OK I just reinstall the bolt and tighten both up. The lower plate clamps onto the pier for coarse adjustments.

Kaptain Klevtsov

[Nessy]

Thanks KK - is this something you bought, came with wedge or fashioned?

After thinking about it for a bit, I realised I could always just have 'curved-extended' holes on the wedge base for the bolts to pass through to the mount. This would allow for 10-15 degrees of adjustment (I guess enough) but I am worried it would scratch up the tripod? I could place some tough nylon strips in-between?

[barkis]

The Meade wedge has a lateral threaded rod that theads on to a captured post held in place by the tripod. Plastic handwheels are used to rotate the rod which gives a reasonable vernier movement to the wedge for a finer adjustment. So much importance was apparently attached to this adjustment, there was a mod introduced by aficionados to make this lateral movement smoother and finer. A few thou can make all the difference it seems.

Ron.

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

Check this out Chris.

http://iseestars.net/image/9196/large/image.jpg

The HEQ5 sits on two round plates. These are actually 2" pipe flanges which fit the spigot of the HEQ5 nicely. One of the flanges has some tabs welded on to keep it centred WRT the other one, though these are usually redundant. The flanges have holes designed for 12mm bolts and I used 8mm bolts to give some leeway with rotation. The lower flange has two offcuts of 4" X 2" steel channel welded to the underside to pick up on the pipe which forms the pillar.

The setup procedure is as follows:-

1) Move the two flanges so that the 12mm clearance holes line up. This makes adjustment either way as easy as the other way, then nip up the 8mm bolts. Using two bolts in a four hole flange is sufficient and leaves two holes free for tweaking later.

2) Using the polar scope, line up Polaris as you would with the standard HEQ5 setup.

3) Lock the two flanges to the pillar in the roughly aligned position by clamping the two channel offcuts together using a long bolt.

4) Drift align by loosening the 8mm bolts holding the two flanges together to allow minor alignment changes to be made by putting a long bar through one of the empty bolt holes. The leverage afforded makes slight adjustment possible as the force is multiplied and the movement is reduced. Tiny movements are quite easy.

5) Lock the whole thing down by tightening all the bolts.

Its easier than it sounds and simpler than it looks really.

So for this method you need two plates on top of the tripod. The lower plate is fixed to the tripod, the upper plate is bolted to the lower plate using bolts through oversized baggy holes. The wedge proper is fixed to the top plate.

Kaptain Klevtsov

[Nessy]

Hi KK - thanks very much, that makes a lot of sense and is a great way of doing it....I will see if this is something I can build in....mostly I was just getting jealous of all those scopes!! Wow!