Telescope solar finder and laser pointer shelf

thingiverse

The idea here is to have a shelf, parallel with the telescope, on which to securely place a laser pointer for telescope aiming. The majority of these use a set of screws to hold and aim the laser pointer. I wanted to be able to remove and replace the pointer easily, so I'm designing this to hold the pointer by gravity and some small magnets. The shelf is halfway to being a solar finder, so that functionality is also incorporated. The openscad source has variables to customize everything. The STL I uploaded includes curved feet to fit my Orion XT8, cutouts for 8x2mm magnets on the shelf and the bottom, and enough room for my 160x13.5mm GLP. I haven't printed it, but I included the code for a Synta dovetail foot from https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1549757 - set the appropriate option to "true" in the source to use the dovetail foot. It seems like this would lend itself to being put on a telrad base, but as I don't have a telrad mount on this scope, and it's really intended to be used night and day both, I've left that off. UPDATE: Having now printed it, I advise making the holes slightly bigger than I have done. The attached openscad source has 8.2mm for the 8mm magnets, which required pliers to get them in; certainly no room for adhesive. And the depth wasn't enough either. Not bad enough that I'm going to reprint it, but I'd suggest increasing both these values. ALSO, check your laser pointer to see where it is most magnetic. Some parts of mine have no attraction at all. Use the "magnetpositions" array to position them optimally.