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Due to design feature of a completely rotatable inner cage assembly, the scope required 2 independent electrical systems with no interconnecting cables. One for the drive system, located in the base of the split ring, and the other in the inner cage assembly to run the electric collimation and environmental control systems. Both systems have independent batteries. | ||||||||
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The drag and drop drive system is driven by 2 small gearhead stepper motors on RA and Dec. The scope has 3 drive rates, track, guide, and pan mode. Track mode is always running in RA unless a button is pushed on the 2 axis hand controller, in which either guide or pan speeds are activated. A switch on the main control panel selects what speed (guide or pan) to run when a button is pushed on the hand controller. The stepper motor driver electronics is based on a SAA1027 controller IC running at full steps. It is supported by a 4024 Binary counter IC and a CD4541 programmable timer IC. Running full steps did not cause a loss of fine resolution due to the huge gear reduction of the drive system and the inherent size of the split ring itself. Max slew speed is good (not fast) but is not needed with a drag and drop clutched drive system. If a fast slew of the scope is required, it is as simple as dragging the scope to the new target and dropping it close to the target. It tracks as soon as the scope is let go from the manual move. Pan mode can then be used to center the object. This works very well for impatient users like myself. 12 volt rechargeable sealed lead acid batteries runs the drive system for about 48 hours. |  |
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| The inner cage, 18 volt electrical system is located on the back of the mirror cell. The extra weight of the batteries helps lower the balance point of the bottom cage. Remote electric collimation is provided by a 3 button hand controller running 3 DC gearhead motors connected to the mirror cell. Power to the upper cage is also drawn from these same 3 batteries. The control panel on the upper cage has switches for the primary fan, telrad dew heater, and secondary mirror dew heater, as well as provides power to the custom aluminum telrad clone. All hand controllers and recharging systems are set up to just plug in to jacks built in to different sections of the scope. For instance the electrical jack on the bottom of the lower cage assembly can accommodate the upper cage, electronic collimation hand controller or a battery charger. 9 pin mini din plugs handle all control logic. |  |
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