seacommander

Thanks Slightly Brown for the article and photos. They gave me confidence to proceed and explore the internals of my Star Discovery mount. My mount suffered from the opposite problem to yours in that there was no way that hand slewing was possible in order to use the convenience of Freedom Find. I initially loosened off the bottom nut as you described but to no avail. Incidentally it was quite loose to start with. Adjusting the top nut did the trick. I then returned my attention to the bottom assembly - this presumably had been made adjustable for a reason. After whipping off the base (3 x cap head screws) that screws to the tripod I came to the conclusion that the bottom adjustment is just to slightly pre-load the large caged roller bearing that supports the whole head and enables it to turn so smoothly. Care is needed to ensure that the pre-loading is not so great that it causes the head to bind due to any slight machining irregularities. The Widescreen Centre in Cambridgeshire managed to obtain a short video from Optical Vision, who are the UK importers for Sky Watcher products, of factory clutch adjustment . The mount in the demo (only azimuth) is set up for hand slewing by only adjusting the top nut. Thanks again for the photos and description of your adjustments. 2085c55827557d7e433a4812a0b830e7 (1).mp4 2085c55827557d7e433a4812a0b830e7 (1).mp4