NEJE Max 4 E80: Building a homemade telescope with just a laser and a 3D printer

[Music] hey everyone how's it going uh welcome back to the channel um for those of you that have been following my channel for a while you realize you know that I spend a lot of time building RC airplanes now what you may not know is that this channel originally started uh for astronomy I'm uh been an amateur astronomy for a long time I worked in Aerospace and space exploration as a machinist in my manufacturing career so one of the things I used to do in the past was build telescopes for a hobby so when NJ sent me this Max 4 laser I realized that the additional power and cutting capability of this uh pretty cool tool would enable me to cut heavier materials and so one of the things I decided to do was to repurpose some Optics from a telescope I had made 20 plus years ago and build a new telescope so since they sent me this great tool I'm going to use it and uh I'm going to build a telescope so here we go in general there are three basic types of telescopes refractors reflectors and catadioptric which are also known as compound telescopes so a refractor is probably the most recognizable type of telescope these were made um most famous by Galileo back in 1609 1610 use these refractors to look out into the universe and really open up our eyes to the possibility of other worlds um it the name kind of tells you how it functions it's a refractor so refract means to bend so what this uses is a Glass lens and it bends the light that comes in through the glass in the front of the telescope that light is bent into a conical shape and concentrated to the ey piece the eyepiece is what actually controls the magnification for a telescope um you can think of telescopes as really just a funnel or a bucket that collects photons of light concentrates it to a focus point and the eye piece is what actually brings it to your eye now a reflecting telescope is a little bit different it uses mirrors instead of lenses to bend that light so this is a reflecting telescope un unistellar evos scope one I think it's about 114 millimeter diameter primary objective or the primary mirror and if you look inside the tube you can see the mirror down in the bottom of the tube so the light goes in there it's bent into a conical shape and conc that image those photons of light are concentrated so you can have resolution and brightness when you're looking at an image of a distant object now this is a little bit different type of telescope this is a smart t scope so it doesn't take the light to an an eyepiece it takes it to a sensor and that sensor can be viewed on a uh telephone or an iPad or any kind of screen so this is a smart telescope which is a reflecting telescope now a caded dioptric is kind of a hybrid it uses lenses and mirrors to bring the light in so this is a um 95 mm maxutov uh cigan telescope which I built probably 20 plus years ago so you can see it has a a lens in the front and a refle refracting a reflecting mirror in the bottom of the tube there so this is kind of a hybrid Best of Both Worlds shorter uh tube assembly even for a long focal length set of Optics so these are the three basic types of telescopes now the one we're going to be building is a 6in diameter 152 mm diameter F10 that's the focal ratio so you can multiply the ratio by the diameter of the mirror and it's going to be about a 60 in focal length telescope reflecting telescope so we're building a 6in F10 Newtonian reflector so uh yeah let's keep going you start with a telescope mirror this mirror made of glass and coated with a thin layer of aluminum has a concave parabolic or spherical shape the one I'm using has a 6-in diameter with a focal ratio of 10 multiply these numbers and you have a focal length of 60 in Mount the mirror on a holder and place it into a tube this tube provides the structure of the op Optical assembly and keeps stray light out of the light path you can use metal wood or even SAA tube which is a heavy cardboard cylinder for pouring concrete columns light enters the tube from a distant object like a star Galaxy or nebula and it gets concentrated to a single point the distance from the face of the mirror to the focal point is the focal length you'll need a small small elliptical flat mirror placed in the light path most often the primary and secondary mirror are sold in sets this small mirror placed at a 45° angle will project the light path out of the side of the telescope tube the light path will pass through the focuser and the eyepiece which is where you'll be looking to see the object now configuring this light path is about the only math you need to know when building this type of telescope the distance from the front face of the pr primary to the center of the secondary plus the distance from the secondary to the top of the eyepiece at the center of the focus will travel needs to match the focal length for my tube assembly I decided to use 1/4 in by 3 and 1/2 in solid oak wood planks um this way I could make a two sectioned lower tube assembly and make it 10-sided that way I can have some mounting for my altitude bearings and it's saves me a little bit of money on wood because of the narrow width of the slats so these are the oak slats that I cut out to um form the bottom half of my tube assembly and I've kind of done a box shape where they're keyed together and if you look at them when they're all aligned I've uh use the engraver the NJ to engrave the northern constellations on the slats here so you can see Orion there's a Sirius and Canis Major the Gemini twins up here Taurus the Bull so these slats are going to form the bottom of my lower tube assembly now I'm mounting all of the oak pieces into three separate rings made out of halfin birch ply wood now when I did the initial testing with the laser you could blast through halfin plywood pretty easily in one or two passes but I realized that the edges of the wood the half inch wood came out pretty charred and sometimes it left voids and I think the different grain directions and the glue kind of played Havoc with the cut so I realized that taking a lot of passes at a relatively high speed and high power really gave me the best finish on the edges of all of the Rings now the two sections of the lower tube assembly hold together solely with wood glue so I really it was really important for me to get good surface quality on the edges of all the cuts I designed these 3D printed clamps out of tough PLA and printed them on my prusa mk3s plus 3D printer which I love things are Workhorse I've been using it for four years and I I love that prusa 3D printer um I made these clamps and I tried to design them so that I can print them as much as possible without any supports maybe a little brim down there for the the smaller edges but at least amount of supports as possible so I designed specifically for 3D printing now these clamps hold halfin dowel rods and these 4ft rods are going to hold the upper spider assembly which holds the secondary mirror and connect them to the lower tube assembly so I had to make something that was nice tough and robust and I can use a single screw to clamp on these half2 in Dow rods now that I have both section of the lower tube assembly put together I'm drilled these four holes put these four holes in the sides of the tube so I can mount my altitude bearings now this is a 3D printed bearing that's going to mount to the center of this assembly here and as this is bolted to the side of the tube these three rails allow the center red section to slide up and down and that has the altitude bearing that big round part um bolted to it now the reason being is that I really don't have an idea of where the center of gravity this tube is so this gives me some adjustability so I can move it forward or backwards to adjust the balance so this is for the Assembly of the actual mirror cell um I've got my lower ring assembly and this is the actual mirror Mount that the uh telescope mirror is going to be mounted to I have 3D printed three feet that are going to go onto the bottom side that are going to prevent the colation screws from resting on the ground when the telescope is taken off of the base so I'm going to mount these on here and then uh we'll get going I have those I'll drop these Springs on here and put this through my mirror cell and then I can add my adjustment Wing nuts to the bottom and now I have a nice uh 3point colation assembly for my mirror cell uh colation is just another word for aligning the mirrors so that they all reach a common uh focal position alignment position so there's my mirror C all right so right now I have the base uh for this telescope assembled uh this round disc is going to be for the azoth and then these cradles here will have Teflon bearing pads for the altitude assembly I 3D printed these these bearings here so these will slide into here uh and eventually be riding on Teflon pads to control the altitude of the telescope um there's no pads in there right now and this will spend left and right to control the the asmith um this was all cut out of/ in uh Birchwood ply um keyed all together with these little stiffener pieces in here with these rectangular bosses and then uh this is all keyed down into the base of the azoth mount if you can see underneath there and then uh yeah so I'm going get the pads mounted up and then uh we'll keep moving forward so I'm using eight 1/ in diameter Dow rods 48 in long and I need to remove off about 3 and 1/2 or 4 in from them to make sure my eyepiece and focuser are all in the correct position so I'm doing uh three quick passes on the uh Naj laser and uh nice clean cuts one thing I wanted to add to the telescope design was to incorporate some quotes or sayings by famous astronomers and philosophers throughout history onto the halfin wood dowels uh there's eight of them holding up the secondary uh mirror assembly the spider assembly and so I was really impressed with the laser and how accurately it engraved that very small script font at 1250 mm a minute and that requires a lot of laser module movement a lot of quick small movements but but I was really impressed with how cleanly and accurately it did the engraving and how how well and legible it came out so now we're getting down to the final stages of the assembly um I'm doing the strut installation uh the lower two tube assemblies are uh assembled and the altitude bearings and the balancing rails are also assembled so it's just a matter of putting the struts in then uh once I'm done with this I'll Mount the secondary assembly up at the top there with the focuser plate I'll do the mirror installation and then uh get everything columnated and then we do the put the telescope base onto or the telescope tube assembly onto the base and I think we're ready to go so here we have it all complete um I got to say I'm pretty pleased with it uh was a bit of a long project this is my 3D printed spider assembly and you can see the focuser plate I've Incorporated a pitini or Weaver style rail for that reflex finder there which gives you quick alignment on what whatever objects you're looking at you can see the curved veins of the spiders which should ideally cut down on the defraction spikes which are the four points that you typically see above a star uh altitude aouth movement all seem very smooth I'm pretty pleased with that see the bearings and the uh balance adjustment right there the engraving on all of the struts there's h four on this side and four on the other all of them have uh sayings or quotes on them now the tube assembly itself I kind of wish the engraving came out a little bit darker um I didn't want to run over it again but I'm pretty pleased with it uh the interlocking plates of the base that's the uh Graphics from the Voyager gold record cover that we launched in the late '70s you can see Orion and Gemini on the bottom of the tube assembly there so all in all I think I'm pretty pleased with it down on the uh bottom you see the the feet there and the actual mirror cell and you can see actually see the back of the mirror right there I said I'm pretty happy with the movement the balance the smoothness and I think it looks pretty cool the Naj Max 4 with the e80 laser module has been invaluable with this build I could not have conceptualized this design um the way I wanted to do it and built it out of the materials I wanted to do it without this piece of equipment um so to be able to like I said I don't have a workshop I work out of my basement so to be able to build a 5 and 12T tall 6-in F10 Newtonian reflecting telescope with an ALT asmith mount in my basement with two pieces of primary pieces of equipment a 3D printer and a laser um I think says a lot about the capability of the tools these days and how much they can enhance your workflow and make your projects a reality so thanks a lot for watching I hope this provided you a little bit information uh feel free to give me any questions or comments uh down below and I hope to see you next time thanks a lot

Channel: ReedInSpace

Views: 768

Keywords: NEJE, laser, Engraver, neje max 4, Prusa, 3d printing, newtonian, dobsonian, telescope, homemade telescope, telescope making, e80 laser, Reflector, Amateur astronomy, alt-az

Id: SEQFnawPNys

Length: 15min 32sec (932 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 16 2024