South Celestial Pole "How to..." Tutorials

Installing Peltier Cooling in a C14 - by Paul Haese

The first thing that you must do is remove the retaining ring that holds the corrector plate in position. There are 8 screws that simply unscrew and allow you to remove the ring. I found that if you just tighten one of the screws a little first and then unscrew it; this will give you an index to how tight the screws should be once you reassemble. They are quite tight, but it pays to know that they are not too tight. more...

EQ5, Adding bearings - by Martin

I have just found some small bearings that fit the wormwheel shaft perfectly. They are 6*10 stainless steel roller bearings, 3mm wide and perfect for the job. The only thing I had to do was make the OD bigger by means of rolling four bearings in electrical tape untill i had the right od of 11.3mm. Those bearings are a very snug fit on the shaft and are showing no slop at all. more...

Cat cooler Peltier redesign - by Paul Haese

I have been wanting to design a peltier cooler for my cat cooler. The Cat cooler is a great tool for cooling SCT's but it is not active cooling in real terms. So I set about redesigning the system. I went out several months ago and bought one of those Dick Smith fridges. I ripped that apart and put the essential parts aside. ie like the heat sink, fan, peltier and cold plates. more...

PVC mount for guide scope - by Lester Barnes

Here is some images of PVC mounting for 102 Takahashi and 8 x 50 finder. The Tak mount is a 150mm PVC fitting cut in halves, each of them has 3 x 1/4" boldts for centring the scope. On the tube of the Tak is a 100mm PVC sleeve so that the bolts are not pushing directly on the tube. more...

How to make an illuminated reticle EP - by Steven McNelley

...With the frames now cut and scraped clean, the tricky task of fitting them with crosshairs is now in order. This is worth finding some resolve and care for, and if you find that human hair is just too difficult to work with another option is fine 4Lb 0.15mm diam fishing line, or even the fine individual strands of copper wire found in light electrical cabling. The hair used in this example was kindly donated by my good lady partner, but extraction by stealth is always an option for the keen DIY'er having trouble persuading a donor. more...

Open reflector lid cooler - by Steven McNelley

This idea features 12V computer casing fans mounted in the OTA lid to extract the warm air out of an scope without subjecting it to the flotsam in the passing atmosphere. Cooler air is drawn in from around the mirror cell end and sucked out via the fans at the top, extracting the warmer air generated by the OTA out the top through the scopes lid fans. more...