DIY Lightbox for FLT

[Rossco72]

Lightbox for a WO 132FLT

After a recent imaging session, my first for many months, I was unable to take any flats as the session ended before daylight and I had no source of light to take them. Darks as usual were fine with the dust cap on the end of the scope.

So, I decided to get a lightbox so that I could get flats no matter the time of day or night. A brief look around the net suggested that commercial solutions were both few and far between and also pretty expensive, so I decided to make one myself. A quick visit to ebay secured a switch, 25 LED’s with resisters and wires already fitted and a battery box. My local craft shop provided plastic coated dense foam board and a diffuser sheet of thin plastic and a white translucent sheet along with some balsa wood.

I measured up the dew shield of the FLT as 168mm in diameter and decided that two rings of 170mm diameter lined with some felt to protect the scope would be ideal to hold the box in place. An external square of 200mm would fit snugly over the scope without fouling guidescopes etc. I measured and cut the four sides of the tube and 6 square panels for the internals. 4 of the squares had 170mm diameter holes cut from the middle and 2 remained solid, one for the lights and one for the top lid with the battery and switch.

The first two holed panels were then lined with some stick backed felt I had lying around from a previous project. These were checked for a snug fit on the dew shield and were perfect. Some testing of the lights had shown that 2 diffusers and a light panel would give a well illuminated and even light. So the next panel had the white translucent plastic fitted to the scope side of the foam board and a diffuser fitted to the light side. A gap was then left and another diffuser panel fitted. Another gap was left and then the panel containing 24 LED’s laid out on a 25mm grid was fitted. This panel had a layer of tinfoil glued to the light side to help reflect the lights towards the scope.

The lights were soldered together in parallel and connected back, through a toggle switch to the 9v battery box. The battery box, switch and a handle were fitted to the end panel. This is held in place with Velcro to allow access to change the battery.

Three sides of the light box are glued together and sealed, the different panes (except the retaining rings) slide into place so that they can be taken out again for any cleaning or maintenance. The last side is taped in place so that it can be removed if access is needed.

The materials cost around £40, but with the exception of the LED’s and switch, there is enough material left over to build another one. Maybe I’ll go into business.....

Well if you have made it this far, thanks for reading and comments are welcome.

Cheers

[Rossco72]

[MG1]

I like it....especially good because I imagine that there is little light leakage as you get pretty far in.

Nice one!

EDIT: forgot to say that you can always add a panel at a later date if you needed to... (I went with the earlsmann ones as they were quite a bit cheaper than the others and think i've managed to get away with the A5 model for my 132.)