Upper cage clamping problems

I have always wondered how reliable and repeatable Astrosystems upper cage clamp mechanism is. In my mind, I imagined the clamp could pivot around the pin. A current ad posted by Gary Siegelman shows what I believe to be a homemade variant of Astrosystems' clamps, and the problem I always suspected might occur is clearly seen in his ad photo.

Does this actually occur with Astrosystems'... er, system? If so, I wonder if they ever considered using a second pin below the clamp pin that slides into the slot and prevents this racking motion? Clearly, to me, this would cause at least mild collimation issues. And how could you ensure you got it exactly the same each time? I suppose this doesn't mark the end of the world, but I am a stickler for rigid assemblies and also hate to fuss with assembly inaccuracy and collimation problems.

Lee

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Seems to me it is just mounted backwards. If the semi-circle mounting plate was turned around then it couldn't rotate.

It wouldn't work for the scope in your example because the truss poles get in the way, but if the truss poles were on the outside you could attach it either way without detaching the truss poles from the mounting plate. Would just depend on how you flipped the poles during setup. Seems like it would be easy to setup the wrong way if you weren't careful.

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I had some problems with the Astrosystems clamps on my 22" dob, just like you describe. The cause of the problem was the poles were slipping in the clamp blocks on the mirror box.