In order to use the iOptron Tri-pier 360 with the Astro-physics AP1100GTO, I had to make an adapter that fits between the Tri-pier 360 and the Astro-physics 119FSA. A photograph of my adapter and the 119FSA are shown below:

Here's a photograph of the finished assembly:

The assembly instructions are discussed in the next section.

Assembly instructions

First, you have to make an adapter. The drawings can be found in the drawings subdirectory of this repository. I made the adapter by sending the adapter_plate_emachineshop1.ems file to emachineshop.

The options that I chose for the adapter were:

1. T6061 1/2" thick aluminium.
2. The adapter was finished with a matte black power coating.

The total cost was $171 (as of Feb 2019) that included shipping.

Bolting on the adapter to the Tri-pier 360

The adapter was bolted onto the Tri-pier 360 with four 30 mm long M8-1.25 button head screws.

Adding the compass

I bought the 20 mm button compass from amazon.

To mount the compass into the adapter, the obvious way is to create a counter-bore so that the compass can be glued into it. However, the price emachineshop charges for counter-boring (which makes it into a 3D job) increases the cost by more than $100! Therefore, I just made a hole in the adapter to utilize an existing M8-1.25 threaded hole that is already on the top-plate of the Tri-pier 360:

I screwed in an M8-1.25 (14 mm long) screw to form a pedestal for the compass. I used rubber cement to glue the compass to it. The reason I used rubber cement rather than super-glue was because I wanted to have the option to remove the compass if necessary.

Drawing a white line for indicating North

I drew a white line using a white Sharpie. I used masking tape and an Xacto knife to make a thin channel that allowed me to fill it in with the white Sharpie.

Bolting on the 119FSA

Finally, the 119FSA is bolted onto the adapter using the supplied 1/4-20 3/4" long screws. I think 5/8" long or 1/2" long screws can also be used. Make sure that "N" and "S" that are etched on the 119FSA are pointed in the correct direction with respect to the white line.

The AP1100GTO mounted onto the Tri-pier 360

Here's the photo of my FSQ106, AP1100GTO and Tri-pier 360.

Copyright

All the documentation and pictures that I have here is copyright 2019 C.Y. Tan and released under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

The adapter design is copyright 2019 C.Y. Tan and released under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.