DIY CatCooler

[Stu]

I've wanted to make one of these for a while, and finally got round to it at the weekend to improve the performance of my C925.

I can't remember who it was on here that recommended the fan I bought off eBay, but thanks, it seems ideal! The ideas came from online searches mainly.

Other than the fan, all parts were from the 'spares bin'. I had some plastic plumbing tubing which was around the right diameter, and was a tight fit on the fan exhaust with some lemonade bottle plastic cut up as a spacer .

The end stop was an old superglue lid, perfect tight fit, and I drilled four holes equally spaced to direct the airflow outwards, away from the secondary.

The final problem to solve was holding it in place, cue a no longer used adaptor which I removed the plastic grub screws from and replaced them with some Allen bolts which allowed me to clamp the tube in the correct place. Thinking is that the gap between the tube and adaptor will allow the hot air to escape.

I should add a filter of some sort to prevent dust and muck getting in, but other than that, and adding a connector to a 12V supply it is done, and it works very well. Thoroughly recommended if you have time  

[John]

Very neat Stu

I seem to recall a company called Lymax (or something like that) producing a cooler for SCT's and Maks. It looked quite similar to yours but I seem to remember that it cost a fair bit.

Have you any results data on the imact it makes on cooling time yet ?

[Stu]

8 hours ago, John said:

Very neat Stu

I seem to recall a company called Lymax (or something like that) producing a cooler for SCT's and Maks. It looked quite similar to yours but I seem to remember that it cost a fair bit.

Have you any results data on the imact it makes on cooling time yet ?

Thanks John, it's a bit Heath Robinson but puts out a decent flow of air so should help at least.

I've not done any 'with/without' tests, that could be quite tricky and time consuming, not sure how best to approach it? Will have a think, trouble is, with so few observing nights it's hard to get a run of similar conditions.

For the moment I suspect I will satisfy myself with 'it is circulating air so it must be working'

As soon as I tidy my garage out and get proper access to my work bench and tools I intend to take the scope apart and do a proper cooling mod on it, hopefully putting some holes and fans in the back plate. I will also play around with insulating the OTA to see if this calms the tube currents at all. At the moment I get quite pleasant views of Jupiter, but the Galilean moons are a mess!