Make A Barn Door Tracker

Here s what you need to make a diy barn door track like ours.

Make a barn door tracker.

It consists of two boards connected by a hinge with a bolt which is turned to move the two boards apart or towards each other to counter the effects of. A followup appeared in the april 1989 issue. We are hoping you can make some sense out of it and take what you can from it. Use a small rubber band to keep the two boards on the turning bolt side sandwiched together.

Make sure everything is square and moves freely clap the 2 hinged boards together and shout action a few times like they do when making movies if it makes a nice clack sound it should work well for a star tracker now measure 228 55mm from the center of the hinge pin down the middle of the board and mark the drive rod holes do this on. This is a simple but useful upgrade. Hang the diy sliding barn door. By 2 inch steel flat plates 13 99 each four 1 1 2 inch steel spacers about 6.

The main difference is that the body of the hinge tracker is just a hinge so there aren t any plywood parts to cut. Create your own barn door track hardware. With the track mounted finish the job by putting the door on the track. A barn door tracker also known as haig or scotch mount is a camera mount used to take long exposure photographs of the night sky without the star trails caused by the rotation of the earth.

Attach a small rubber band. While it s possible to make a bracket to attach the motor off to the side where it is on my barn door tracker i chose to mount mine in line for a more compact assembly. This sliding door track can be made for under 100 including wooden wheels track the ebook available in the blog post provides a full list of the tools and supplies you ll need. Mount the end stops bottom guides and any other hardware according to your specific set of instructions.

Just wanted to mention a few quick adjustments and upgrades you can make to your barn door tracker that will make your life a little easier when you go out and put it to the test. The mount shown here employs a type 4 double arm design. Okay now that our disclaimer is in place here goes. We bought everything from the home depot.

A barn door is a specialized type of equatorial mount. First cut the 500mm length in half and mount the hinge. The double arm design was first described in an article by dave trott published in the february 1988 issue of sky telescope magazine.