fully parametric 3D printed equatorial table

[aeropic]

Hi All, I'm fully new to astronomy and to this forum so forgive me if I don't use right vocabulary. Anyway I learnt a lot here so I want to thank you and share with you my design for a 3D printed equatorial table on  which I installed a vintage Newton telescope (Sky-Watcher 200x1000).
Originality of this design is that I made it fully parametric so that the Vertical Curved North Segments can be compiled and generated according to the characteristics of your telescope (size,mass, latitude).
As I'm located in South of France I could only test it at around 45° of latitude, but I think it would give good results in a range of 30-55° ...

I was afraid of the rolling surface of a 3D printed part on top of a ball bearing so I decided to add a metallic rail on top the VNS to get a metal on metal motion. I get with this really smooth and friction less motion.
You can see that the motion is done by a worm screw pulling a carriage and a connecting rod. Obviously all this is not linear, compensation is done by the firmware inside the ESP32 micontroller  coding the adhoc equations...

It is still a prototype and I could not really make observations with it as the weather is not optimal ! All I can say it that it works perfectly and keeps stars (nearly) fully centered during 1 hour, which is good enough for my needs and visual observations. I don't know if it will be good for Astro Photo but I'm not equiped for this yet... ?

You can see it running here on youtube:

 

All the design is described here on thingiverse: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6362263
Please feel free to comment !

[aeropic]

here are my first pics and video taken with the old SkyWatcher 200x1000 mounted on the 3D printed equatorial table...

Stability of this table is quite good.
I must improve my skills for a better focusing on Jupiter ☺️

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6fJBA_TYC4

Edited December 28, 2023 by aeropic

[athornett]

That's incredible and wonderful! Folks are 3D printing everything these days! Have you published the 3D printing source files?

[aeropic]

44 minutes ago, athornett said:

That's incredible and wonderful! Folks are 3D printing everything these days! Have you published the 3D printing source files?

Thanks!
Sure,  the design is described here on thingiverse: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6362263
You'll just need to install  OpenSCAD (freeware) to render your VNS.

[aeropic]

first astrophoto results are promizing.
10 pictures of 30sec stacked....
 

[lunator]

It looks an excellent piece of kit and certainly performs well enough for astro photography. 🙂

Cheers

Ian