Post by skyluvr on Jun 15, 2013 20:12:34 GMT -6
Just a quick over view of my CI-700 retrofit.
My C14 came with the rock solid CI-700. With a few tweaks it has performed great with the C14 riding piggy back. Years have past and the age of computer controlled telescopes is upon us. While the CI-700 is a great mount....... it is still a manual mount requiring you to slew to the objects in the night sky (we know peoples feelings about that
). Rather than buy a new mount I decided to convert the CI-700 to GoTo with the Meade Autostar controller. The Yahoo group "Roboscope" provides all the information one would need to build a conversion. So I dove in.
In this photo you can see the motors for each axis. The motors are 18v coupled to a 51:1 planetary gearbox. Special plates were fabricated to hold both the new motor and the worm assembly. the brass standoffs were installed to provide more clearance when the telescope is pointed closer to the zenith.
The output of the planetary gearbox is coupled to the worm with a 1:1 belt drive.
Yes, the velcro works very well to hold the handbox ;D
Here you can see the custom machined controlbox with the various components installed. The box was machined from a solid block of aluminum to replace the Celestron box exactly. It broke my heart to turn all that aluminum to chips
In this photo you can see a close up of the controlbox. To the left is the Autostar DS motor boards that handle the encoder counts and pulse output for the motors. On the right is the motor driver board that takes the pulse output and drives the motors.
Finally the tripod for the CI-700 tripod needed to be adjustable since Autostar needs the mount to be a least close to level. So, I fabricated some adjustable feet to mount to the tripod. The center post is a 10 inch long 1 inch OD galvanized pipe. It gives plenty of adjustment for leveling on uneven ground.
As far as operation the slew speed is a bit slow (but ok for a large scope) and the GoTo's are spot on. There still is a lot of fit and finish that needs to be done but I am happy with the results so far. ;D
Rick
My C14 came with the rock solid CI-700. With a few tweaks it has performed great with the C14 riding piggy back. Years have past and the age of computer controlled telescopes is upon us. While the CI-700 is a great mount....... it is still a manual mount requiring you to slew to the objects in the night sky (we know peoples feelings about that
). Rather than buy a new mount I decided to convert the CI-700 to GoTo with the Meade Autostar controller. The Yahoo group "Roboscope" provides all the information one would need to build a conversion. So I dove in.In this photo you can see the motors for each axis. The motors are 18v coupled to a 51:1 planetary gearbox. Special plates were fabricated to hold both the new motor and the worm assembly. the brass standoffs were installed to provide more clearance when the telescope is pointed closer to the zenith.
The output of the planetary gearbox is coupled to the worm with a 1:1 belt drive.
Yes, the velcro works very well to hold the handbox ;D
Here you can see the custom machined controlbox with the various components installed. The box was machined from a solid block of aluminum to replace the Celestron box exactly. It broke my heart to turn all that aluminum to chips
In this photo you can see a close up of the controlbox. To the left is the Autostar DS motor boards that handle the encoder counts and pulse output for the motors. On the right is the motor driver board that takes the pulse output and drives the motors.
Finally the tripod for the CI-700 tripod needed to be adjustable since Autostar needs the mount to be a least close to level. So, I fabricated some adjustable feet to mount to the tripod. The center post is a 10 inch long 1 inch OD galvanized pipe. It gives plenty of adjustment for leveling on uneven ground.
As far as operation the slew speed is a bit slow (but ok for a large scope) and the GoTo's are spot on. There still is a lot of fit and finish that needs to be done but I am happy with the results so far. ;D
Rick
