Now you have attached the altitude wheels onto the mirror box. Now place the rocker box onto the ground and insert the mirror
box into the rocker box. Make sure that the two fans on the back of the mirror box are on the side of the rocker box that has the
deep undercut (see figure 6).
Figure 6
Now take a look at the mirror box from above. You will notice threaded rods that are sticking out of the corners of the mirror box.
There is a wing nut riding on each of those inward pointing threaded rods. Unscrew the wing nuts until the end of the threaded
rods, but take care that they don´t come off
– they could fall onto the main mirror.
Take a look onto the truss pairs that were delivered with the telescope. Each pair of trusses is connected by a metal bracket that
has a groove on the other side. Slide the bracket with the groove over the treaded rod and fasten the trusses with the winged
nut. Attention: after you have fastened the wing-nut you have secured the trusses to the mirror-box
– but are still able to swing
freely from side to side. Make sure that the trusses are able to bump into something valuable
– like your head. You can prevent
the trusses from moving too freely by fastening the screws that hold them a bit tighter. Remember that you have to move the
trusses later
– do not tighten them to a point where you cannot move them later.
Now take the four short screws with the knobs
– it is time to attach the secondary cage unit. Originally the telescope is designed
to have the focuser oriented on the right side, so that the red dot finder is above the focuser when you move the telescope.
Important:
During the attachment of the secondary unit please make sure that you have control of the secondary cage at all
times. If you are doing this for the first time you will need a few minutes to get accustomed to the procedure, since you have to
hold the secondary cage with one hand and align the truss holes and the threaded hole of the secondary unit and insert the
screw with the other hand. If you are doing this for the first time, the help of a second person is very handy. Align the holes in
the upper ends of a opposing pair of trusses, stick a screw through both of them and insert the screw into one of the threaded
holes in the lower en brackets of the secondary cage. Do not fully tighten the screws until all four screws are inserted correctly
– trying to force a screw into the threaded hole on the secondary unit will damage the thread. If assembled correctly, that screws
will go into the threads without the use of force. After all four screws are successfuly placed into the threaded holes in the
secondary unit, fasten the screws.
Now attach the stray light cover to the secondary unit by pressing the four velcro pads onto their corresponding counterparts on
the secondary unit and attach the red dot finder by sliding it into its bracket. The telescope is now fully assembled.
Collimating the optical systems
All Explore Scientific Telescopes are leaving our factory collimated
– they get collimated during their final quality insurance test.
However
– a telescope that was disassembled has to be freshly collimated after reassembly. Collimating a telescope is a
straightforward procedure that is not very difficult. However
– due to the fast optical system of the telescope and the
sophisticated collimation unit that is unique in the Explore Scientific dobsonians we will discuss this in detail. Do not get repelled
by the length of the description
– we are just doing this in sake of completeness. The whole procedure is not difficult, and
collimation after reassembly takes only a few minutes, if you have numbered your trusses and reassemble your telescope the
same way it has been disassembled.
Basically the collimation of the telescope is done in three steps:
Rough Collimation
Collimating the secondary mirror
