With my steppers motors on order it was time to start thinking about bearings and slip rings. I knew that I wanted the ability to have continuous rotation which meant slip rings. Trying to find a bearing that had a decent shaft diameter but wasn't designed for a large rotary turntable was impossible. So in what at this point was becoming a theme for this build.... I brought a monster bearing. 

It's greasable, mounted with 8 x M8 bolts and is insane overkill. But it gives me lots of room for a centrally mounted slip ring and I know that no matter how unbalanced the load ever gets that this bearing isn't going to be the thing to fail.

About the same time that the bearing arrived my first motor turned up. Sitting them side by side on my bench I realised that I may have overdone it and starting questioning just how much power this thing would have but also how much it was going to weigh. So in typical fashion I started to design the mount to be made from 5mm steel. I decided on a tab and slot style construction instead of trying to factor in material loss due to bends etc. 

I came up with three main assemblies to be welded together out of lots of little parts. There was the base which doubled as the AZ section, the ALT section and the equipment shelf which was designed to hold a Losmandy clamp, spotting camera and laser pointer.

And off the designs went to my metal fab shop.