BLUE: My DIY Harmonic Equatorial Mount 🚀🌌

[Astro3dprintgeek]

I'm excited to share my latest project with you all: a DIY harmonic equatorial mount!

Design and Construction: I designed and built everything from scratch. It was a challenging but incredibly rewarding experience.

Technical Specifications:

- Two harmonic drives size 17

- Two Nema motors with a 1:19 ratio

- Aluminum body with 3D

-printed aesthetic finishes

Initial Tests: Using an ASI 585 camera and a Samyang 135 f/2 lens, the mount comfortably supports exposures of 60 and 120 seconds without autoguiding.

With autoguiding, I've achieved 300 seconds and I'm eager to test 600 seconds!

I'm really proud of the result and can't wait to share more updates and images captured with this setup!

Watch my video to know more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7kTkYoBsHY

 --- Sorry for the AI background in the first picture, but my room is a mess. Hope you like it!

[Coco]

I very much doubt that pointing accuracy and tracking on anything longer than a short camera lens would be satisfactory using stepper ticks without encoders @ 1:19 ratio. You could improve it with a Nema gearbox but that would introduce a little back lash where as belts like big brand names use would be better but you would need a bigger body..

Nice tidy project all the same. Welcome to the forum 😁

 

 

[Astro3dprintgeek]

In reality this is harmonic, 1:19 is the nema gearbox, but is connected to an s17 harmonic drive like the one you can find on the zwo am5, the total reduction is 1:1900 per axis

[Coco]

15 minutes ago, Astro3dprintgeek said:

In reality this is harmonic, 1:19 is the nema gearbox, but is connected to an s17 harmonic drive like the one you can find on the zwo am5, the total reduction is 1:1900 per axis

Apologies I didn't see the youtube video before commenting.

[saac]

Well done @Astro3dprintgeek very well executed. I love your description of the journey you went through in the design process. As a student (mechanical engineering) way back in the 1980s before the age of goto mounts, I wanted to build a control system for my telescope as part of my studies. I had neither the skills nor access to the wealth of information available to us now so sadly it didn't fly.  You may have just inspired me to revisit this and have a go at building my own now.  I notice from your youtube video you have made your work open source - congratulations and thanks for doing so this is very generous, well done.  I hope you are able to update us on how it continues to perform and what mods or upgrades you may make.  Oh an a big welcome to the forum, please stick around. 

Jim 

[Astro3dprintgeek]

Thanks so much, I appreciate that my work has inspired others, I will for sure be sharing and posting updates here!