adjustable height mobile pier

[mattifor]

I have for the last month been engaged in designing and building an electrically adjustable height mobile pier.

1st attempt was a failure this was made of a 4" inner aluminium round tube and a 5" outer aluminium round tube, two of Arthurs cheap run guide rings and two satellite dish acuator jacks three pier stand legs.

however this was unsteady at height extented to 36".

Latest project was to build a Pier with a center section made from an electric wheel chair seat rising column.

attached the EQ-4 mount to the top with a 6" section of 4" aluminium round tube. to stabilise when raised and to take weight of telescope to prevent sway constructed duck feet.

see attached photos.

initial test apear to work giving an variable heights of 24" to base of mount to fully extended 36" to base of mount.

as can be seen in the pictures, reducing back and knee bending to a minimum.

Column section taken from a Infracare twister wheel chair that had been scrapped, requires 24 volt 2amp

well pleased withit but might redesign the duck feet.

comments and critics welcome I've got thick skin, (or so the wife say's)

Edited August 7, 2009 by mattifor
coments added

[dark knight]

Wow - absolutely blumming brilliant,,I like this sooooooo much, awesome,,now I want one too lol

[mattifor]

A desk rising column uses the same mechanism but could not find a secondhand unit, so opted for scrapped wheel chair parts.

you might need access to metal turning lathe to make the base for bottom af the top column, however you could getaway with a mount head adaptor plate turned upside down with three sturdy bolts to fix it to the top of the rising column.

[Space Cowboy]

Found this thread today as I'm considering making a mobile pier. Can't believe this brilliant design only got one comment!

[redtail]

Wow,now i am on the search for a riser.

[redtail]

Can you tell me where you got the wheelchair seat lifter.

[mwayne]

I did something similar, but not nearly as elegant as mattifor's pier and it's not portable which I didn't need. The lifting mechanism is a trailer tounge jack and pieces of hdpe glued to the moving part as glides. It works great and keeps it's target in the center of for as it is raised or lowered. Sorry didn't mean to hijack the thread.

[catman161]

What a great build. Well done and thanks for sharing. That's a very good piece of work right there

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[newbostonian]

mwayne, I'll be looking out for a trailer jack if this is how successfully a rising pier mount can be made with one! (Here in the UK, I haven't been able to find a maker of rising piers, just static height ones). What a tremendous job you've done.

[Gina]

Congratulations on both rising piers

A rising pier would give me a lot more lower angle western sky coverage but to biuld something strong enough and rigid enough to take what I put on it, including an EQ8 mount, would require a fair amount of engineering

Edited November 16, 2015 by Gina

[r3i]

Congratulations on both rising piers

A rising pier would give me a lot more lower angle western sky coverage but to biuld something strong enough and rigid enough to take what I put on it, including an EQ8 mount, would require a fair amount of engineering

Pier Tech in the USA do commercial offerings but at a price.: http://www.pier-tech.com/

[Peter Drew]

I've used multistage electrically driven commercial extending piers for rise and fall camera obscura tables up to 100cms overall lift when the budget allowed as they are expensive. For smaller budgets I've made my own. They do call for engineering facilities but are straightforward in construction. You need two large section square tubes, the smaller having around 10mm clearance when slid into the larger. Two sets of four ballraces are then mounted in brackets such that bearings will protrude through slots cut in the outer tube and bear on the face of the inner tube. Placed in two groups of four this effectively makes a linear bearing. The bearings can be slightly loaded to eliminate any side play and the square section removes any rotation. The inner tube base can have a plate tapped to accept a threaded lifting screwed rod powered by hand or an electric motor. Not the full details but I hope the principle is clear.    

[Gina]

Yes, that is just the sort of thing I had in mind.

[LLarry]

On 07/10/2015 at 07:47, Space Cowboy said:

Found this thread today as I'm considering making a mobile pier. Can't believe this brilliant design only got one comment!