Parabolizing a Telescope Mirror - BBAstroDesigns

- Myron Emerson's Amateur Telescope Mirror Making - GAP 47's machines summary - David Harbour's Understanding Foucault - Albert Highne's Portable Newtonian Telescopes - Neale E. Howard's Standard Handbook for Telescope Making - Albert G. Ingall's Amateur Telescope Making, Volumes 1-3 - H. Dennis Taylor's The Adjustment and Testing of Telescope ...

tut44 Making A Mirror Grinding Tool - Asterism.org

Making A Mirror Grinding Tool By Allen Malsburry The average person would never think, "I can make my own telescope." Most amateur astronomers believe, "I can buy a better telescope than I can build." Neither is actually correct. For many decades now, amateur …

Strasbaugh polishing and grinding machine | Astromart

Strasbaugh polishing and grinding machine. You wont find very many of these around. Strasbaugh is the premier manufacture of machines used by the professionals. This machine is solid no plastic or wood. You can adjust the spindle and eccentric speed with a turn of a knob while running. It makes mirror grinding a pure joy.

Making a homemade mirror grinding machine - ATM, Optics ...

Making a homemade mirror grinding machine - posted in ATM, Optics and DIY Forum: I want to make a motorized mirror grinder, any good info on this, i have a couple geared motors, low speed high torque. One more question ...will 1 1/2 shaft size pillow block bearings work good for a homemade EQ mount? Thank you, John

Rough Grinding a 20" Quartz Telescope Mirror on the Fixed ...

This video shows how to setup a mirror grinding machine for fixed-post grinding, also known as spin grinding or spinning. After setup, you'll see how abrasi...

grinding / polishing machine for telescope mirrors ...

Mechanical assembly is complete. The machine could start grinding now. I still need to build the electronics, and then there's painting and finishing.

Constructing a Grinding Machine for large apertures - ATM ...

Page 1 of 2 - Constructing a Grinding Machine for large apertures - posted in ATM, Optics and DIY Forum: Ive been using a 4.5 equatorial from Orion for many years now and Ive finally got the time and money to build a telescope from the ground up. Unfortunately my local astronomy club has no-one with experience with ATM-ing. Given how interested I am on the subject (prospective …

Upgrades to the telescope - Stony Ridge Observatory

But thanks to Roy's motorized grinding machine, the grinding was only endlessly noisy and nerve racking, not muscle stressing. Four eyepiece/instrument ports, located near the top end of the telescope tube at the Newtonian focus, are positioned at each of the 4 cardinal points.

Large Thin Mirror Making - BBAstroDesigns

A grinding machine relieves the labor, but is not necessary. A 24" is the largest you can comfortably do solo. ..., Sky and Telescope magazine starting on page 75 carries an article by Toshimi Taki, analyzing mirror cell design to support thin mirrors. ... We choose 220 grit to start because the grinding particles are small enough to move onto ...

Would an amateur telescope maker be able to grind a mirror ...

Answer (1 of 5): The record for largest telescope made the same way amateurs use today goes to Ireland's Lord Rosse, who in 1845 built a 72-inch-telescope. Mirror grinding How the Enormous Mirrors on the World's Largest Telescope Are Made Liquid mirror telescope - Wikipedia This guy a truck d...

Ritchey Telescope Mirror Grinding Machine - YouTube

Excerpt from VHS video made at the Lick Observatory optical shops in Santa Cruz, CA before the object was acquired by the Smithsonian. Circa 1985.

Stellafane ATM: Materials & Tools

The Tools: Grinding & Polishing. You will need two tools: A hard tool for rough and fine grinding, and a soft tool, or pitch lap, for polishing and figuring. Traditionally, the pitch lap was made on top of the grinding tool. We recommend using plaster disks for tool …

Grinding Machine for Large Telescope Mirrors

Grinding Machine for Large Telescope Mirrors. I designed and built a grinding machine for mirrors up to 42 inches [1.1m] in diameter. By slipping on and off a couple of belts, the machine can quickly be reconfigured for spinning work or for stroking work. The machine can also work smaller mirrors if the drip pan is moved to the fast shaft on ...

Amateur Telescope Making Main Page - Stellafane

Amateur Telescope Making Main Page. "For it is true that astronomy, from a popular standpoint, is handicapped by the inability of the average workman to own an expensive astronomical telescope. It is also true that if an amateur starts out to build a telescope just for fun he will find, before his labors are over, that he has become seriously ...

Mirror Grinding Machine

My Mirror Grinding Machine. For a long time I've wanted to build a machine for grinding telescope mirrors. Dennis Rech's M-o-M designs finally inspired me to just get up and do it. Over the years, I'd been collecting motors, gear boxes, pulleys, etc. Most of them came from industrial junk yards.

Fixed post mirror grinder advice - DIY Astronomer ...

Basically there are two types of grinding/polishing machine. The 'traditional' type which involves the mirror rotating at a relatively slow speed, a few rpm for a big mirror (16-20 inches) with the tool moving across the mirror, from side to side, at a higher …

A Modified near-draper, near- MOM telescope grinding …

Bill W, Ian K, David G, and I (Guy B) modified an existing quasi-Mirror-O-Matic machine by changing pulley ratios and changing it into sort of a Draper machi...

How I built an edge grinder for telescope mirror blanks.

I eventually decided I needed to build a dedicated edge grinding machine. This is how I did it. I started the build by making a sturdy frame for the unit out of 2x4 lumber and 3/4 inch thick plywood. Wheels were added to the bottom of the unit so it can be wheeled outside. The grinding operation will be messy, so it will need to be done outside.

Christiaan Huygens and his telescopes

Figure 2: Lens-grinding machine of Christiaan Huygens (From his 'Opuscula Posthuma', published posthumously by Janssonio Waesbergios, Amsterdam, 1728 ) What made it very difficult to produce usable lenses, as the Huygens brothers soon found, was that the whole art of lens grinding was surrounded by secrecy.

Mirror grinding | Diy telescope, Refracting telescope ...

Grinding a 25-Inch F3 Telescope Mirror: Thinning and Flattening the Back. Gordon started with a 2" thick telescope mirror that weighed about 70 pounds. By thinning the blank, he's lightened the mirror by about 20 pounds!

Stellafane Links Page

A large list of links to other web sites we hope you will find useful. We try to list sites that complement or augment the information on our site. The inclusion of an off-site li

Mirror-o-Matic mirror making machine - ATM pages of ...

Mirror-O-Matic grinding machine. When I decided in 2009 after a ten-year break to get into mirror making again, it quickly became clear to me that I would need to construct machine, as hand grinding big mirrors is not something very beneficial for the hands of a musician.

Build your own telescope part 1: The mirror – Thomas ...

Rough grinding. This step is about making one side of the glass concave. It will give your mirror its overall focal ratio. If you make the centre deep, you will end up with a fast telescope (e.g. F/D = 4) well suited for deep sky observations. On the opposite, a shallow mirror (e.g. F/D = 8) will be performing very well on planets and the moon.

Mirror grinding - Telescope making

A good starter size is the 150 mm (6") mirror. A 200mm (8") will also work. Most ATM books and websites recommend a Pyrex® mirror blank, but in my opinion, annealed plate glass is better for this first, "learn and practice" mirror.It is cheaper, it is softer and grinds faster, needing less abrasives and with these small sizes, the low expansion glass like Pyrex has no practical (visible at ...

Robotic mirror grinding? - ATM, Optics and DIY Forum ...

NC grinding of aspheres has been done but a sufficiently stiff machine with adequate resolution encoders is required together with sufficiently accurate (sub micron) metrology so that achievement of the desired shape can be confirmed before polishing. IIRC REOSC used computer controlled fine grinding on the VLT primary meniscii.

Using the Fixed-Post Grinding Machine for Rough Grinding ...

Gordon Waite sets up his fixed-post mirror grinding machine to begin rough grinding on an 11" f/4.3 telescope mirror. He uses a grinding tool made from dent...

Goplus 750W Drywall Sander with LED Light and Collection ...

Goplus 750W Drywall Sander with LED Light and Collection Bag, Variable Speed 900-1800 RPM Electric Drywall Sander with Telescope Handle and 6 Sand Pads, Dust-Free Wall Grinding Machine - - …

Making two matching 30 inch [0.76m] F2.7 telescope mirrors

The 13.2 inch meniscus acts like standard flat-back mirrors (as does the 20.5 inch x 2 inch thick Pyrex mirror), but the 25 inch is definitely floppy: I saw that during fine grinding as the blank flexed and scratched at 9 micron aluminum oxide, necessitating a return to 25 micron AlO2.

Mirror-o-matic.com

The Machines: Documentation: Information for ATMs Zip archive of Mirror-o-Matic Yahoo Groups (2000-2019) 307 Contact Dennis ...

Preparing to Grind a 22" f/4.0 Telescope Mirror - YouTube

This video shows preparations for grinding a 22" f/4.0 telescope mirror. This is the first mirror of a pair that will become a 22" binocular scope! Gordon ...

telescope mirror grinding / polishing machine with ...

The machine is shown grinding a 300 mm mirror.How to build a tachometer:

How I Make Light-Weight Hexagon or Honeycomb Telescope ...

Rough grinding is complete for the 12.5 inch honeycomb-back telescope mirror blank. The rough grinding went pretty quickly and painlessly this time. I only have maybe 12 hours of actual work in the mirror so far. It's hard to believe, but the rough grinding has removed over a pound of glass. The mirror now weighs in at only only 8 pounds 15 ounces.

Astronomy Options | Astronomy, Mirror Making, Telescopes ...

Currently manufacturing a 16″ diameter 1″ thick plate glass f3.88 Newtonian telescope mirror. Doing this with my new fixed post grinding machine built this summer. Work is progressing well, and very efficient. Started project in August 2013 and at this point I am ready to move on from 25 micron White Aluminum Oxide to 9 micon White Aluminum ...