8" F/4 binocular chair updates posted.

[Astroman]

On my ATM pages:

http://www.stargazing.net/astroman/Astronomy/ATM/NewChair.htm

Some new pictures and descriptive text.

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

Looking good AM, keep us posted, I bet we'll al want a ride.

Kaptain Klevtsov

[Astroman]

I should mention, the torsion box is a prototype, made of cheap, exterior grade plywood. The finished product will be from furniture grade, 13 ply plywood.

[barkis]

Well you have captured our attention with your rebuild of this unique device AM.

The Alt. Az. mechanism+ superstructure seems to be progressing OK. It looks to me like a project I would be delighted to partake in. May set you back a bit, but I would be a willing horse. I love things rising out of pieces of wood. I guess it is the kind of work that will speed towards completion as soon as the sticking points are overcome. The chair itself seems to be well under your control, but what about the optical elements, is there any work to do on those?. As KK said. "Keep us posted"

Best Wishes.

Ron.

[Astroman]

The chair and OTA's remain the same from the original creation, pictured at the top of the page. I hope to keep them this way, with some minor mechanical tweaks at the focuser/interocular, but a quick trial run with the OTA mounted shows some considerable balance issues I hadn't come across the first time. I may be enlarging the OTA bearings, but that's a guess.

I'll try to stay current with this here, too, as well as the web page.

[beamish]

Kool, keep up the good work.

[Astroman]

Over the weekend, I placed the OTA on the chair and found the balance point was farther back than expected. Also found the balacne point of the OTA itself will dictate a larger Alt. bearing. I'll be using the 10" bearings that I made for the original refurbishment and rebuild the chair cradle parts.

I've refined the program used to determine the centers of mass of all the parts and am hoping to get a more accurate model. So far, it looks pretty good, if a bit tedious. I'm also taking this opportunity to draw the smaller bits and bobs attached to the OTA in particular-the finder scope, the focuser mechanism etc, as some of these will be refined down the road, and an accurate model will help there.

So, onward and upward!

P.S. I also made the azimuth drive ring and the altitude drive section. I tested the azimuth drive with the designed cable, a 1" piece of pipe and turning it by hand as I sat on the torsion box. It worked easily!

[barkis]

My Idea of constructing something Steve, is to make a prototype from my minds eye. It then becomes a long haul of modifications until the prototype eventually becomes the finished article. I think I will have to adopt your methods, like planning, and drawing, Thats if I ever get around to making anything else that is. Highly unlikely.

I am looking forward to the completion of this rebuild, as are a few others here. Perhaps you could arrange to have a vid. of it in action,

preferably with you or Rosie at the controls. Of the chair that is, not the video camera.

You are doing a great service for your astro community, I hope they appreciate the time and effort you are giving to it.

Cheers mate.

Ron.

[Astroman]

Thanks Ron. I've already documented some video of the torsion box rotating and the chair rocking, but don't have a program to convert my video files from camera format to mpg. The camera records to DVD with a .vob file extension. None of the 3 programs I have seem to recognize it. :scratch:

[barkis]

Is it not an AVI? does windows media Player not play it.?

Ron.

[Astroman]

Is it not an AVI? does windows media Player not play it.?

Ron.

Nope. Windows doesn't recognize it, nor does my friend's MAC. I'm downloading a converter now. (I hope it works.)

P.S. It works, but crashed after the first segment, and asked me to "register" (after my "free" download), for $39.95, which I don't have at the moment. At least I know there's software out there that will do the conversion.

[Starflyer]

Hi AM,

Have you tried converting it to a standard avi with VirtualDub? http://www.virtualdub.org/

Cheers,

Ian

[Astroman]

Tried it just now, Ian. It crashes. Could be the download, though. I'll try it later at home.