Today I will be applying the final coat of paint to the interior of a customers 130 mm refractor. Yesterday the tube interior was textured and painted and the attachment parts were installed. Daniel is continuing to work on the 102T carbon fiber tubes, getting them ready for final assembly by Shelly. Shelly has been knocking out both the 102Ts and the 80STs like there is no tomorrow. We have 80STs on the shelf but going fast so we begin the process of machining more tubes later today. Andrew has been organizing the warehouse and completed our quarterly inventory. Our inventory is up more than 100%. Cathy has steam cleaned the clean room and telescope assembly area and has been gathering up 15 years worth of eyepiece samples for sale to a surplus supplier. We need more room! Next she will be pulling old stock off the shelves so we can sell everything that is not current. We plan to sell everything to a business that sells surplus optics. Today I will be designing the 135DF inserts to hold the lens within the main tube. I have decided that this telescope will be made like the original 135 which is still in service for the Institute for Astronomy in Hawaii. The advantage to making this telescope with a 7 tube is that the lens gets placed in an insert that slides into the main tube. The dew shield is threaded to the insert. So everything is 7 OD. This allows the rings to be slid forward as much as needed. I will be doing some fancy machining on the insert to reduce weight and I will spend the day today reducing the OD on the 7 tube (which will be used for the tube and dew shield) so it is lighter yet sufficiently rigid. I will also reduce the majority of the middle part of the dew shield to reduce its weight. This will make a lot more sense once I finish and post a picture here. Today I will post a pic we took of our new prototyping cnc mill. It is a 3 axis mill that can also be used manually with the flip of a switch. Wonderful new machine! I have added the SV60 Apo to the website. We will soon be taking pre-orders. I have removed the SVR90T. We only have two 90s left. With the extreme popularity of the 102Ts I am deciding if I will make more 90s in the future. I have not yet made that decision. It will be based entirely on what my dealers want and are willing to buy in advance. These projects are costly and we have to sell a certain volume each year. What I have found is that people considering the 90T give it some thought, read the Dennis DiCiccos review and then upgrade themselves from the 90T to the 102T. They understand it is the sharpest 4 refractor on the planet. The carbon fiber tube is also quite light and it is portable. So it may not make sense for me to keep the 90. I have also removed the aluminum tube 102T from the website. We are running low on those tubes and very few people have opted for this version. We can make a custom aluminum tube version for those who have some compelling reason to buy an aluminum tube but since almost everyone opted for carbon fiber, this change seems to be a no-brainer. I am purchasing more material for 130 lens cells. Once these are finished I will be able to mount all of the 130 lenses we have finished polishing and coating. So we will start going down the notification list for the 130s in about 30 days when the cells are finished and lenses mounted. One thing is truly evident at Stellarvue. We are never bored. In fact there are few places I have seen where people are always so busy. This place exudes positive energy. Vic Maris
Posted on: Wed, 14 May 2014 13:45:19 +0000
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