Converting a SW 16” Flextube Dobsonian to a Truss tube Dob.

[LondonNeil]

You can be proud of that.  👍👌

[PeterStudz]

That looks superb. Well done! 

Out of interest, where did you get your ebony star textured laminate from? When I made my Dob base I did it in such a way that I could experiment with different bearing materials, but I never found any ebony star. However, what I’d did find that worked best for me is thin stucco embossed aluminium sheet (see link below). It looks very similar to that used on many Bresser Dobs. Mine was 0.4mm thick, cheap, easy to cut with tin snips and is lasting well - still going strong after more than a year. You could try some of that on your Alt bearings in place of the carbon fibre.

Another option that I tried and worked well is to kind of “turn it around” and use ptfe tape for the curved surface and any scraps of ebony star laminate in place of your ptfe pads. Instead of tape you also get big thin sheets of ptfe that are usually supplied to the catering industry. 
 

Whatever… it looks excellent!
 

 

[tomato]

Thanks for the feedback. The easiest possible fix for the alt bearings is to apply some turtle wax, so I'll try that first. In the Dobsonian Telescope book there is a section about the ptfe bearings can have a wedge effect if spaced too far apart, and it is a fairly simple task to relocate these, so that is something else to try.

The laminate sheet on the Az bearing is not bona fide Ebony Star, but based on the description on eBay was the best UK equivalent I could find. It definitely has a textured surface and seems to work well. 

 

[tomato]

Just  a postscript on how the scope is performing:

Moving it from its storage location in the garage around the side of the house to the observing locations in the back garden is a a breeze, the pneumatic tyres make light work of gravelled areas, lawn and even a 3” edging kerb on the patio. 
From opening the garage door to being ready to observe after a collimation check is under 10 minutes.

I was planning to use a Celestron StarSense unit with the scope but I recently changed my phone and the one I have now has a much wider angle camera lens than my old one which picks up a lot of stray light in certain directions making the plate solving unreliable.

Tomatobro was not happy with this so is now in the process of installing a Nexus DSC pro unit and encoders to the scope.