How to remove the "crown" of Skywatcher Heritage 150p?

[palfarano]

Dear all,

I am a complete beginner and have a Skywatcher Heritage 150p with GoTo mount. I ordered at a 3D printer this shroud and to mount it I need to remove the "crown" holding the secondary mirror.

The screws holding the "crown" look like a pig nose and the holes are 10 mm apart. Do you know any commercial tool to unscrew those?

Thank you!

Pietro

 

Edited May 31 by palfarano

[NGC 1502]

Option I- Adjustable circlip pliers or a similar tool would sort that.

Option 2- looking at your pic, measure very carefully the distance centre to centre of the 2 holes.  Make up a tool from a flat metal bar with 2 protruding nails the same distance apart you measured.

Welcome to SGL😊

Edited May 31 by NGC 1502
Adition

[palfarano]

Thank you! I had no idea of the name of this tool

I will try option 1 for the moment 😅.

SGL has been a great resource for me to start this hobby!

[Ricochet]

Before you fit your new shroud, I would suggest flocking the inside of it. Plastic can be quite reflective at shallow angles and you don't want to be replacing one type of stray light with another. You will need to use a lint roller or selotape to remove any loose fibres from the flocking material before you fit it. Depending on the tolerance between your shroud and the original tube you may also be able to flock the lower solid section of the OTA too.

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/telescope-flocking-material/black-velour-telescope-flocking-material.html

Also, do you have to remove the top assembly from the truss poles? Can you not just remove the stops from the bottom of the truss poles and slide the whole thing off the solid section? In photos it looks like the stops might be held on by a screw, but it is possible they are also glued.

[palfarano]

3 hours ago, Ricochet said:

Before you fit your new shroud, I would suggest flocking the inside of it. Plastic can be quite reflective at shallow angles and you don't want to be replacing one type of stray light with another. You will need to use a lint roller or selotape to remove any loose fibres from the flocking material before you fit it. Depending on the tolerance between your shroud and the original tube you may also be able to flock the lower solid section of the OTA too.

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/telescope-flocking-material/black-velour-telescope-flocking-material.html

Also, do you have to remove the top assembly from the truss poles? Can you not just remove the stops from the bottom of the truss poles and slide the whole thing off the solid section? In photos it looks like the stops might be held on by a screw, but it is possible they are also glued.

Hi there,

Thank to you too, very good point! After having a look at the screws of the top part of telescope, I think you might have a good point!

I have three options to insert the shroud. I think your proposal of removing the stoppers is the best one. Maybe I won't have to collimate the secondary at all.

--> What do you think?

1) Remove the top assembly from the truss poles via unscrewing the pig-nose-screws

2) Remove the top assembly together with the truss poles via unscrewing the pig-nose-screws of the stops of the bottom of the truss poles

3) Remove the screws which holds the top assembly + truss poles from the optical tube. There are two screws going through the green bar (dovetail?) holding it onto the optical tube & the top structure.

And also three screws holding the top structure onto the optical tube. You can see one in the picture above and also one example below.

Cheers and thank you all for your support

Pietro

[Ricochet]

If the screws are the same at the top and bottom of the truss poles then my preference would be to remove the ones at the bottom. If they don’t go back on properly you can live without a stopper but the top assembly not being secure would be terminal. The third option should be fine but it is more work. The joint tends to be quite tight so getting the ring back on needs a bit of care. 

[palfarano]

Dear all,

I finally got the 3D printer shroud and the flocking material.

I would like to share with you my first attempt at customizing my telescope. If you have a Skywatcher Heritage 150p, feel free to contact me!

Thanks to @NGC 1502 and @Ricochet for their support 🙂

Here the 3D printed shroud in its beauty. I ordered it through CraftCloud and it has been printed in Poland. I took the cheapest supplier. It costed in total 30 EUR, of which 15 EUR delivery to Switzerland. It took two weeks between order and delivery.

1) I removed the part of the telescope containing the truss poles, the secondary mirror, and the rest.

The best was has been to remove the dovetail from the OTA and after it three small screws holding the structure to the OTA

2) Then I tried to check if the 3D printed shroud is OK or not. 

3) The Shroud needs definitely some flocking

4) After flocking. Flocking material is some cheap stuff I bought from Etsy. I think it works well for what it's worth.

No reflections in my opinion.

5) To fix it to the movable part, I glued it to the existing small plastic structure behind the secondary mirror.

I used "TESA Powerstrips".

 

5) 

6) And... ta daaaa... My telescope is like new.

 

[Louis D]

The sad part is, the manufacturer could include some sort of rigid tube shroud as a product improvement/upgrade, but they don't.