Dobs and Door width

[Earl]

I have been looking at a few dobs, I remember when I had a 10" it went through a door fine, but looking at 16's there might be issues, whats the deal here?

[brantuk]

Measure the width of the door and that will give you the maximum diameter of assembled dob bases you can look at. You can of course go larger if the base breaks down into easily portable bits. But fully assembled bases tend to be heavy and awkward to maneaover through narrow doorways.

[Steve Ward]

Better to measure the opening as there are the doorstops to account for , probably only 10mm each side , and also the thickness of the door to allow for if it does not open beyond 90 degrees . . . !

And the handles may cause grief as well.

I've had to remove umpteen doors for folks over the years who've not made the correct measurements when ordering furniture , not something you want to be doing everytime you want to get your toy outside .

Steve

[John]

I've seen dob bases where the owner has sliced a couple of inches off the edges to fit it through a door. It doesn't seem to affect the funtionality if done neatly.

[Moonshane]

this is one reason I made my own dob base. my 16" scope has a rocker box only 550mm (22") square which is about 2" more than the 10" SW dobs. the SW offerings seem overly large even at the smaller end of the scale but I think the 16" base disassembles easily for transport?

[swamp thing]

An 18" Dob should go through a standared 2' 6" doorway. So any 16" that doesn't, isn't designed properly ( this is all the budget ones).

its extremely bad design to make a 16" scope that doesn't go through a normal door way without requiring it to be tipped, or having to carry it at a bizarre angle. Yet both Skywatcher and Meades offerings are both guilty of this.

Just shows you the kind of care that they put into their designs, the old "that'll do" approach. It's not rocket science to redesign the bases for your larger models yet they can't be bothered they simply scale up.

If you want a properly designed scope I would look elsewhere.

[Sarah]

The Skywatcher 16" dob base is designed to be taken apart into 4 separate pieces to make it more portable. It doesn't take long to take apart and to put back together.

[johninderby]

See the Orion Optics UK dob bases to see how a dob base should be designed. Only as big as they actually have to be and take up the minimum floor space. And then of course they're made from CNC cut alloy so no warping or rotting problems down the line. Also like the way the tube is mounted using tube rings so the balance can be adjusted by moving the tube.

While they'd be too expensive for a mass produced dob there's no reason SkyWatcher or Meade couldn't copy the basic design in wood.

John

[swamp thing]

The Skywatcher 16" dob base is designed to be taken apart into 4 separate pieces to make it more portable. It doesn't take long to take apart and to put back together.

Cabinet building in the field is not what I would call good design. I would call this an after thought. A case of "oh god we can't lift it, what are we gonna do now?"

[Earl]

See the Orion Optics UK dob bases to see how a dob base should be designed. Only as big as they actually have to be and take up the minimum floor space. And then of course they're made from CNC cut alloy so no warping or rotting problems down the line. Also like the way the tube is mounted using tube rings so the balance can be adjusted by moving the tube.

While they'd be too expensive for a mass produced dob there's no reason SkyWatcher or Meade couldn't copy the basic design in wood.

John

I do like the look of the Orions, a 16 looks good