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Mirror-O-Matic
8" Mirror Grinding
8" F6 Project

CONSTRUCTION DETAILS
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The entire project of building the mirror-o-matic, grinding and polishing the mirror, an building the telescope took a little over a year to complete. It should of not taken this long to complete the project but in between home repairs an other duties most of the work was done on weekends an after work.

Building the mirror-o-matic from start to finish including painting took about 2 months. Mirror grinding about 1 month, an polishing an figuring was over 3 month. Actual construction of the telescope was a little over a month. As always I like to take lots of pictures throughout the projects I work on for my own sanity, so I will share them here.

The hardest part of building the telescope was to decide on whether to build a tube or truss style telescope. Since this was my first time at building a telescope I decided to go with the tube type.

I did not buy any telescope making books or have any plans. All the information I used came off the Internet, and observing the construction of every body else's telescope. One critical component that helped out was a program I found off the Internet several years ago called NEWT.EXE. This program helps the builder in designing mirror placement, secondary size, an performance of the telescope.

I drew up my own plans on Autocad when appropriate to assist me in the construction, and used Newt for all other measurements. The following links are of the Autocad drawings I had done: rocker box side, rocker box front and tube rings.

 


 
Programming by: Victor T. DeCristoforo
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Last Modified
October 17, 2009