Telescopic stand design coming on well.

[CumbrianGadgey]

Hi,

This bad weather has left my brain rotting. I decided in an idle moment to design a stand for the shorter astronomer. All sorts of ideas started popping into my head, the favourite one being a telescopic stand that can be pneumatically raised and lowered. This idea seems to be both feasible and practical to achieve.

I have almost got it drawn up on CAD, sourced suitable materials and ironed out the little niggly bits of the design.

The idea is simple (Putting it into practice required a bit of thought). Once the stand and scope are set up and polar aligned, the stand itself can telescope vertically by around +/- 100mm. In doing so, slackening band clamps and spinning a big Newt to get the eyepiece at a comfortable height is a thing of the past. It also means that if my daughter comes out for a look, I won't need to do the 'balancing her on a stool in the dark' performance. Also, if I want to raise the scope, I won't have to mess around lifting tripod legs and possibly disturbing polar alignment, which will remain beautifully unaltered.

It will also be lighter than my Skywatcher tripod and will not have any angled legs for the scope to bang into, enabling viewing of overhead objects without the need to lift and turn the whole caboodle. The scope can spin 360 degrees while viewing over head without catching on anything.

It's just to pass the time but the more I think about it, the better the idea seems to be. What do you think and how have you been whiling away the cloudy nights?

[Clockwork_Orange]

Hi Gadgey

I saw something similar to this in "Astronomy Now" the other month I think, certainly makes you think. You can pick these up off the bay for around the £120 mark, but would take a bit of adapting to get the mount head to fit, not sure if the center spindle would spin freely either?

Regards

John

[trazor]

Sounds a plan.

How will you supply the air?

Used one of these a few years ago, quite a reasonable price, £205.00

http://www.midlandpallettrucks.com/adminimages/Company_16/TF15.pdf

[Clockwork_Orange]

Its hydraulic Trazor it doesn't need air, contains oil, you just use the foot peddle to raise the jack same principle as a car jack and then hit the release valve to lower it might work for visual star hopping but about its limits I'd think.

[trazor]

Its hydraulic Trazor it doesn't need air, contains oil, you just use the foot peddle to raise the jack same principle as a car jack and then hit the release valve to lower it might work for visual star hopping but about its limits I'd think.

I understood that, I was replying to the OP, his version is pneumatic.............

[Steve Ward]

Good starting point here ...  http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dentist-Chair-Base-/151223332358