I spent part of the holiday this past Christmas in a machine shop building the rotor and housing for the telescope.

Diagram of the telescope rotor and housing

The above diagram shows what I’m building. It is red and green completely by coincidence. The rotor is a very thin, 14″ diameter aluminum wheel with a small window to let light through. Essentially it is a very small aperture shutter. It will be spinning at 7200rpm inside of a thick aluminum housing that will dampen noise and vibration as well as protect users from the disk spinning inside. The eyepiece and objective lens will go on either side of the housing.

The Mill

Beginning to cut the rotor

The mill is a WWII era Bridgeport, a massive iron monster that will cut just about anything, so it had no problem with the thin aluminum. The main problem is that there weren’t many tools at the shop. I ran into some problems because there wasn’t a way of taking precision measurements, and so let’s just say things didn’t line up quite right.

Making chips with the bearing housing

Finishing up the disk

All in all, it was a successful Christmas in the machine shop. The rotor seems to be very well balanced and most of the difficult cuts and layout are complete for the housing. What remains to be done are small pieces — the bearing housings, motor mount, and optical assembly.

And then of course there’s the motor driver circuit that’s in pieces on the workbench at home. Some of those pieces are charred bits of plastic.

Happy 2011 everyone!