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The Hadley can be printed at home with your own 3D printer. The telescope is a 900mm Newtonian reflector. I used an Ender 3 to print out the parts.
I had a lot of fun building mine and have taken some good photos. You can see the rings of Saturn and the craters on the moon. I also saw Jupiter and 4 of it’s moons.
Filament: PLA
Parts Needed:
See the full build
How To Build
First Step
The first thing you need to do is to print out the small test part. This part has a hole in it the same size as 1/2″ steel rods that support the telescope. It also has a nut and screw assembly.
Print this out as is and see if you can slide the rods through the hole. Also test if you can slip a 10-24 nut.
Most likely you cannot due to shrinkage. To fix this, measure the actual diameter of your 1/2 rods and then the actual diameter of the printed out test part. Find the difference in % and the scale the parts in your slicer. Print the scaled part again and see if it work. If so, then use this scaling factor to print out all the parts.
Print Your Parts
I built mine from the bottom up.
The lowest part is the LTA or lower telescope assembly. This assembly holds the mirror cell. The cell has adjustment screws so that you can properly collimate the telescope.
Once this is all printed, you need to install the hex bolts below the mirror itself. This has to be done before you glue the mirror onto the cell. I went to a couple of hardware stores and could not find the right hex bolts, so I just took a 10-24 machine screw several inches long and jammed on a nut prior to installation. That worked out just fine.
On the lower side of the hex bolts, install 3 small springs approximately 1/2″ long. The length is not that critical. You just need some wiggle room to that you can properly align the lower mirror.
Here is a clip from the main tutorial showing how this is done.
Glue Mirror To Cell
I just glued the mirror in place with plain old silicon sealant and it worked great. Be sure to center the mirror in the cell since it will improve your image when properly centered.
Mount Interface
The mount interface holds the telescope and allows you to pivot up and down. There are 2 files, one says Planets and the other does not. I could not see any difference between these two files. I just picked one and went from there.
When I first built it I used a rocker box. So I printed out the Z bearings and it works ok. Later I took them off and installed Ball Bearings which worked out better for me. You can checkout that post here.
I also wanted ball bearings so that I could motorized the telescope which I have done. I love the motorized version so much more since it’s a snap to view any object at high magnification.
You can watch the short on YouTube Notice how I can easily adjust the telescope in small increments at high magnification.
Sites
The sites are installed next. One goes just above the the mount interface and the other can go on top, or just below the UTA.
Upper Telescope Assembly (UTA)
The telescope is almost done. The upper telescope assembly holds the focuser and the spider.
Spider
You have several choices of spiders and they vary how the diffraction spikes are shown. I chose the James Webb version just because I think its the greatest telescope ever built. It’s just a matter of preference.
Now when you print the spider, you need to embed nuts. This can be done by adding the pause print into your slicer program. The nuts are required to that the three machine screws you insert for the secondary mirror collimation will work. As I recall the designer wanted 6 nuts but you really only need 3. It appears that he designed it with 6 for stability, but 3 work just fine for me and it’s less complicated to print.