Make Barn Door Tracker

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.

Make 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. Create your own barn door track hardware. Pound in the t nut with a hammer. We bought everything from the home depot.

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. A barn door is a specialized type of equatorial mount. 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. Four 3 1 2 inch lag bolts.

The double arm design was first described in an article by dave trott published in the february 1988 issue of sky telescope magazine. Here s what you need to make a diy barn door track like ours. First cut the 500mm length in half and mount the hinge. This will allow you to hook up the tripod to the tracker.

A followup appeared in the april 1989 issue. Two nylon locking nuts. Barn door track diy tutorial. Drill a hole just big enough to allow the insertion of the t nut.

By 2 inch steel flat plates 13 99 each four 1 1 2 inch steel spacers about 6 two 4 inch pulleys 4 78 each four 1 inch fender washers.