Make a Telescope
A home made telescope
You can make a high quality beginners telescope costing less than $200 that will show you amazing details on the Moon, Saturn’s rings, Jupiter and its moons and a lot more astronomical wonders before you can ever exhaust its capabilities. It is also a great family project.
Here's how
Follow these easy steps
Go to Amazon and buy these
A mirror kit
An eyepiece
A 1 KG spool of 3D printer filament
Purchase a one month membership at the Inventors Forge Maker Space https://www.inventorforgemakerspace.org/
for 24/7 access to all the equipment you will need to build your telescope.
We will give you the control software for all the parts needed for the optical tube assembly (OTA) and show you how to load them on the 3D printers to print all the pieces. There are about 10 parts to print, some of which will take only a couple hours, a couple might take overnight. No worry – the machines will do all the work. It will be possible to start more than one part at a time as we have lots of 3D printers that work independently. You should get the work done in a week or two depending upon how often you want to visit the Forge.
Go to Metal Supermarket (9427 Dielman Rock Island Industrial Drive, St. Louis, MO, 63132) and purchase three 1/2 in aluminum rods, 3 feet long (about $30).
Once the pieces have been printed, go to Menard’s (Lowe’s, Home Depot) to buy a package of #12 machine screws and nuts for assembling the OTA.
Go to Menard’s (Lowe’s, Home Depot) and buy a 2x4 foot sheet of ½ inch MDF (about $12), bring it back to forge and we will show you how to cut out the parts for the telescope base using the CNC router machine. A few dabs of glue and a spritz or two of paint and you are done.
Bring you new telescope to any of the ASEM events to join the star parties and get help, should you need it, with your new telesccope.