Our Founder
Paul McNabb founded the mirror lab in 1997 in order to create the best amateur telecopes possible.
Inch for inch our mirrors surpass store bought or commercial grade scopes.
Where the 19th Century Art of Mirror Making Meets the 21st Century
The Saint Petersburg Mirror Lab is a small band of dedicated mirror grinders and telescope makers living in the Tampa Bay area of Florida. We offer a mirror making class for interested persons. We strive to create the best mirrors our home brew technology can muster. This includes robotic foucault testing and laser interferometry.
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OCAL Electronic Collimator 2022-09-14 |
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| We have been testing the OCAL Electronic Collimator. This is it on a 2005 era Dobsonian telescope. If it had not rained here for the past two months I would tell you if the stars looked sharper. The laser collimator says that it's good. |
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Chris rebuilding part of his dob 2022-05-09 |
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| Chris's scope needed a few tweaks. The secondary two vane holder was replaced with a four vane model for better collimation adjustment and the cage was rebuilt to make it a bit lighter and squarer. The Mirror box trunnions needed to be include a center pivot point for his new digital setting circle encoders. Chris and Allen met at Ralph's garage for an afternoon of wood dust making and deep scope design discussions. |
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Chris's new cage 2022-05-09 |
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| The new cage was assembled and tested to locate the new center of balance on the scope (yes, we know that the Telrad is upside down). With the new spider and staining it looks pretty good. |
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2022 OBS Raffle Scope Winner 2022-03-07 |
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| Phillip Roey was the winner of the 2022 Orange Blossom Star Party raffle telescope. This was a rebuilt Meade with a real wood base. Thanks to Ralph, Brad and Mike for the rebuild. |
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A Trio of Mirror Lab Scopes 2022-03-07 |
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| Here is Allen, Mike and Ralph (left to right), Mirror Lab instructors, with their personal telescopes at the 2022 Orange Blossom Special Star Party. We had a week of clear skies! |
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Telescope Walk-A-Bout at the 2022 OBS 2022-03-07 |
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| This is Tom Spano (far right) describing his three pole telescope to a group of OBS Star Party attendees during the Saturday telescope walk-a-bout. |
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Light Weight Pre-Slumped Mirrors 2021-08-16 |
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| These are Mike's finished 10 inch and 12 inch blanks that still need to be edged and diametered. The top image shows the 3D printed pattern that they are made from. The bottom image shows that they are pre-slumped to a rough ROC. There is also an older video on Youtube that shows his entire process of making the light-weight blanks, from design and 3D printing, to plaster casting, to glass casting, to slumping and final edge finishing at https://youtu.be/hjcqsBKYUOE Mike recently posted a video on Youtube of him cutting a bunch of mirror blanks out of a thick glass tabletop. You might find it interesting. Here's the link: https://youtu.be/t0teStWs7W4 |
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3D Printed Dob Truss Pole Clamp Set 2021-07-23 |
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| This is a 3D printed 1" truss pole clamp set for a Dobsonian telescope. The STL files and editable model is available on www.tinkercad.com. Links on where to get the knobs, truss poles and other parts are in the comment fields there also. The parts have been printed and fit nicely but have not been tested on a scope yet. |
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3D Printed Telrad Dew Shield 2021-01-04 |
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| Using an Ender 5 3D printer and a file from Thingiverse I printed a Telrad dew shield. The 16 inch Maxx has a blue focuser so I used blue plastic for the dew shield. It's a snug fit and the cutout for the Telrad dimmer could be a bit larger towards the front. It's time to tweak the model a bit. |
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Joe W. with his 8" f/8 "planet hunter" he built 2020-10-23 |
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| He put the newly recoated mirror in the scope today and gave it a general tune up. Still in good shape for being about 15 years old. |
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