The Giant Binocular

[eugene13]

Then again I think I suffer from an annoying compulsion to do everything myself and if I could refine the ore for the metals I would.

I've worked in a steel mill and would like to help out

 

[savarin]

Talk about lucky, with a little bit of redesign work I managed to bore out the existing tertiary and just had to add the wider components to it.

Also made the focusser unit, there is a pressure pad of cutting board plastic that applies friction via the screw arrowed to adjust the feel of the unit.
The eyepieces sit inside that long tube which will be cut down into shorter sections.
I machined out the recesses for the lower bearings and the complete assembly is held onto the tertiary unit with 6x3mm long screws.
It forms a very rigid structure, lets hope its rigid enough.
Next, find some plate for the bottom of the tertiary units for the tertiary mirror holder to screw into so the mirror can be adjusted in height and twist.
Very large order for all the correct sizes and lengths of all the bolts and screws used so far to do then I can paint these parts.

 

[savarin]

Both tertiary mirror supports finished.
Made from brass strip silver soldered.
I wish these were my idea as they are I think very simple but I found the design here.http://www.rfroyce.com/spider_cv_8/holder.htm
The one on the left is assembled and the aluminium disk bolts into the base of the unit shown in the previous post.

The dirty part needs soaking overnight to remove the flux scale.

 

[savarin]

Finished both focuser and tertiary mirror holders and one curved spider.
The 6 rods I made yesterday (https://www.hobby-machinist.com/thr...y-what-did-you-make-in-your-shop-today.67833/ message 22) are holding the ends of the spider to the top cage. Even with the curved vanes its very rigid.
The support for the secondary mirrors will be larger versions of the small ones in the tertiary unit that I cant start till I receive them.

 

[Mikelkie]

Nice and interesting project, well done so far.. ps perhaps the Eiffel might be easier

 

[savarin]

I often think you are correct.
At the moment I'm welding the brackets for the joiner plates that lock the two halves together.
No one will believe me but as I ran out of argon I switched to my mig mix of argon/co2/oxygen blend ( just to check out some gas flow problems) and against all my expectations it actually worked.
No neat row of dimes as it looks like an O/A weld but it did work.

 

[woodchucker]

I didn't know oxygen was used in mig welding. I thought only O/A

 

[savarin]

this is the gas I use on mig
http://coregas.com.au/gases/welding-gas/coregas-5-2
and this is one of the welds using it for tig.
I dont advocate its use for tig but it did work so I'm finishing off the bottle. (not a very good pic I'm afraid)

 

[savarin]

Cut the 6mm aluminium sheets with an Irwin metal cutting blade, I used the fence for the long side but did the smaller cuts by hand.

Bolted the back panel to one of the the top trusses.

The bottom panel is just resting there to check for squareness.
BUT, when I placed the other truss alongside to sort out the hole alignments I realised I had welded the bracket on the wrong vertical.
What an utter dork

I've started cutting it off but it got too late to keep using the angle grinder so I have to clean up the tube and then weld another bracket to the other side.
DOH!

 

[savarin]

Tried to clean up the length but to no avail so I cut it out and welded a new piece in then welded the flange to the correct side.
Now the top and back panels are bolted in place I'm impressed with how rigid the assembly is.
It still has to have another panel fabbed and bolted in at the bottom which will make it even more rigid.
The holes in the back panel are just for artistic license.

I have to get a full list of the correct size fasteners to replace the odds and sods I'm using at the moment.