Ad Astra Observatory

I did a little bit of cleanup on the parts (I cut the rocker sides down and chopped the bearings in half, and did some sanding).

Most of the rest of the evening was spent figuring out how to lay out the parts that will be cut by the CNC.

The parts that need CNC work are:
– The rocker bottom — just needs a hole for the pivot bolt (with countersunk head/washer)
– The ground board — Needs to be cut into a triangle and have the pivot bolt hole cut
– The altitude bearings — I am considering the concept of buying a new piece of ply, then cutting out the bearings that way (I’m not happy with the manual methods I used), so I wanted to lay out the part as well as the cutouts, making sure that the cutouts left meat for the DA to attach to.

I finished all 3 CAD drawings. The ground board was the toughest by far; it took several iterations to figure out how to ease the corners of the triangle, and I’m still not 100% sure how it will cut. But I have high hopes.

The altitude bearings were kind of fun to do, if a little tedious. It was a lot of rotation and translation and “cut at intersections” work, and I am looking forward to seeing them get cut out by the machine.

Now that I think about it, all the cuts are pretty simple, but they are also quite large pieces, and I can see the CNC machine being busy for several evenings doing all the work. It’s enough to make a person want to cut out more than one scope at a time…

Anyway, the sky was taunting me tonight, clear as a bell. grumble.

I have to cut the ground board one way or the other, and the rocker isn’t going to center-bolt itself, so I can’t really avoid all the CNC work, but I can prioritize the cuts and probably get up and running either tomorrow night or the night after, depending on how fast the machine can cut out the parts.

Once all the parts are cut out, I need to start construction. Another plug for a new piece of plywood: I need to cut out the rocker front and back at some point, and a new piece of ply would leave me a lot of leftovers for that. I also have to remember to buy or build myself some feet, both for the ground board, and for the OTA.

Good progress tonight.