HEQ5 BELT MOD DRIVE KIT(Malc-c industries :D )

[SlipperySquid]

Hi all,

Just thought I'd do a quick review on the HEQ5 belt drive mod kit that SGL Malc-c put together.

Just to make it perfectly clear this wasn't a freebie or anything and I'm in no way associated with Malc other than this forum and I wanted to give an unbiased opinion on the kit for anyone that wants to purchase one from him (I think he only has a couple left) or wants to get the kit together themselves from the thread he put together detailing his findings.

So on with the review!

I was first drawn in looking at the EQ6 belt mod thread and noticed Malc started to ask about the possibility of adapting the idea for the HEQ5.

Fast forward and after all testing, trials and tribulations the kit was formed.

When Malc said that he was able to get a few kits together for anyone that wanted to have a go themselves I jumped at the chance as I love to fettle and anything a bit different with the added bonus of improving the mount gets two thumbs up in my eyes.

So with a couple of Pm's sent and payment made I awaited the parts getting machined and dispatched to my loving arms.

The kit cost £80 including postage, this may seem a bit high BUT these are one off kits and not mass produced and everyone has the chance to get the bits themselves without purchasing a kit but I didn't want to go through the hassle

So what do you get for the your well earned pennies?

Package arrived in a lovely little box contents:

2 x 60t pulleys machined to fit the RA and DEC shafts.

2 x 15t pulleys machined to fit the motor shafts

2 x Kevlar reinforced timing belts

1 x laser cut perspex spacer for the cover

6 x M3 x 12mm screws

Instructions

Tools needed for the job in hand are:

Screw driver, set of allen keys (down to 0.5mm important!)

Pliers a bit of wood, hammer and a nail.

Maybe a small needle file (I didn't need this)

Fitting of the kit for me was easy though removing the motors was a bit fiddly because of the way the cables are wrapped around other cables! removing the small gear from motor shaft was easy enough, pair of pliers under the small cog so the shaft moves freely and the small cog butts up to the pliers then rest motor on bit of wood. Use the "nail" as a drift to knock the shaft from the cog...job done!

Then just follow the rest of the instructions in the manual and you are good to go (Note small 0.5mm allen key is needed for grub screws, I never had one, but had an imperial one that sort of fitted ...a bit..).

As to elongating motor slots to get required tension on the belts, I didn't need to, the motor and the plate can be adjusted separately so you can get the belt tension without having to butcher the slots.

IMPORTANT SIDE NOTE:

The 60 tooth pulleys where very snug on the shafts so be very careful when you push them on because if you push them on to far you'll have to lever them up with a screw driver to get the belt to run true it's a right P.I.T.A and can result in damaging the teeth on the pully when levering, so just be careful and not a ham fisted neanderthal like me

The most time I had to spend with this kit was altering the pulley heights so that the belts tracked true which came in at about 20 mins for each pulley and total time for fitting the kit is about 1.5 hours including coffee and swearing a lot when I lost a grub screw.

Once belts where true I slewed it all about with the scope and ccd attached to make sure everything was Hunky Dorey and awaited clear skies to put the kit through it's real life test.

FIRST LIGHT:

Ok the claims made by Malc where better goto's, no backlash , lower pec and faster/quiter operation.

The mod can only be used with the latest eqmod with a custom ratio of 4:1 added to EQMOD which is already in the options in the new version.

This done and the scope cooled I slewed to my first star. I made my usual adjustment to put the star in the center of the cross hair on my CCD. Slewing IS faster and you can only hear the noise of the motors with no gear rattle etc.

Second star just slightly off centre but the real test for me was slewing from one star in the East to another in the West. With the old gears, this was always out by a fair distance but with the belt mod it was only slightly off centre. Result!!! I slewed across the sky for about an hour and the stars/ celestial objects where either bang on centre or just slightly off centre.

Onto the guiding side, with the old gears it was hit an miss with a fair few spikes appearing.Sometimes good guiding sometimes bad.

With the belts fitted on the first test night it was ok, I was imaging fairly low in the sky and the star in my 50mm finderguider was very faint (imaging HA in ic410 wich is pretty sparse of guide stars in my low power finder). I was slightly dissapointed with the guiding on the night but saying that is was consistent with no irregular spikes appearing and the stars in the subs where tight and round.

I also tried imaging a second night but this was not to be due to heavy cloud spoiling my fun .IC410 was at a higher point this night and the guiding was much better even through the cloud

Again the goto's where very accurate which cut down the time that I would usually have spent messing about trying to centre stars.

So in conclusion,

Better GOTO's

Tracking consistency

Quieter and faster slews

I haven't tested PEC so can't comment on that.

So do you really need a belt for your HEQ5? Depends really, I think the question you should ask is if you want IMPROVE your HEQ5.For me it was a marked improvement for not much effort on my part.

The kit did what it said on the tin, it's well put together and a big big thanks to Malc for taking the time to do all the testing and ironing the bugs out!even to getting the spacer laser cut is a very professional touch.

The kits are limited and I don't know if he'll ever produce anymore, though to be honest I don't care...I've already got mine

Few piccies at the end for those that can't be bothered to read...the last two being the guiding graphs.

Thanks if you took the time to read this....Shame on you if you never, it took ages to type when I should be drinking wine!

Clears skies,

Matt.

[Daniel-K]

very good review and a very nice upgrade!

[malc-c]

Matt,

Pheww... I've been looking forward to your review with part anticipation and part fear ever since you said you might post your observations on the forum -I'm pleased to hear that you are happy with the kit and the improvements it's made to your overall observing experiences. - The fact that you're pleased with the kit has made all the time, effort and money spent in developing it worth while - Thanks.

Without trying to break and site rules, I can confirm that I still have a couple of kits left and anyone wanting one or further information on these kits, please drop me a PM

[ianaiken]

The kit has to be used with EQMOD which is fine. To be absolutely clear, would it still when the Synscan hand controller was plugged in?

[malc-c]

Hi Ian,

No it's not possible to use the mod with the SW hand controller as the ratio is 4:1 on the belt drive, where as the hand controller is expecting the default 9:47 ratio, which would cause incorrect slewing and tracking

[ianaiken]

OK thanks. Great review, very tempted, but need my handcontroller to work also :-)

[malc-c]

This morning I spent a few hours doing some maintenance in the observatory, having just got some astro development altitude bolts I installed them, and I checked the collimation of the 200P (which was still good). I then removed the cover from the gear box to see how well the belts have held up, and was pleased to see no trace at all of any belt degradation over the past 6 weeks of use

OK. next project.... Belt drive EQ5 ??????????

[malc-c]

Many thanks to all those who have PM'ed me with questions on these kits, one of which was regarding the use of the kit in -30C temperatures (which is basically at the extreme limit and only suitable in dry conditions at that temperature)

At the time of posting I have one kit left, and to be honest once that has been sold I doubt I will be making up anymore kits due to the time and costs involved. Anyone interested in obtaining this last kit please drop me a PM.

[malc-c]

UPDATE:

The last kit has been sold - Many thanks for all your support guys. Thanks also to the Admin team for not pulling my posts advising SGL members on the status of the kits availability. It's been an effort to get to this stage, but it has given me a lot of pleasure in being able to offer something back to the SGL community.

[Starjumper]

Great review Matt, and well done Malc.

John

[SlipperySquid]

Thanks John! Thought you'd fell off the face of the earth did you manage to get any fishing in this winter??

Great to know the last kits have gone Malc! I now know who to contact when i get my EQ6

One last guiding graph from the other night whilst imaging the Flaming Star nebula in HA.

500 sec graph.

[robin-m]

Having fitted my Malc C industries kit this weekend I can only second everything Matt has said. I've seen commercial products less well packaged and documented than Malc's kit and the whole job was complete in an hour or two with no issues at all.

Since the fitting both guiding and goto seem to be more accurate than before.

Needless to say I'm more than happy with it and consider it £80 very well spent.

Thanks Malc

Robin

[malc-c]

Having fitted my Malc C industries kit

LOL - you guys crack me up

Robin, pleased to hear you are happy with the performance of the conversion. It's this sort of feedback that has made all that time, effort and investment developing the kit worth while.

[bamus]

OK. next project.... Belt drive EQ5 ??????????

do you know if this is availiable somwhere?

[malc-c]

do you know if this is availiable somwhere?

Don't think it's even been attempted yet

[Earl]

Does a Belt Drive increase the Load capacity?

[malc-c]

Does a Belt Drive increase the Load capacity?

I'm no expert, but I wouldn't of thought so as the motors will still have the same stalling point when the torque becomes too excessive.

[biopic]

Don't think it's even been attempted yet

It should be perfectly possible with an EQ5. I have a belt modded Vixen GP-DX, which dimensionally at least is the same as an EQ5. The mod performs extremely well.

[malc-c]

The only concern I have with the EQ5 is that the motor gear and final gear are not in the same plane, so unless there is sufficient length on the motor shaft to secure the motor pulley it could be do-able

Once I've put my scope back together (flocked the tube) I might just try modding the eq5 with a spare set of B grade pulleys, at least to prove the concept

[biopic]

There are more details of this mod on Carsten Arnholm's site, although I am not using the Astromeccanica kit, and my PE is a bit better than his.

[bamus]

The only concern I have with the EQ5 is that the motor gear and final gear are not in the same plane, so unless there is sufficient length on the motor shaft to secure the motor pulley it could be do-able

Once I've put my scope back together (flocked the tube) I might just try modding the eq5 with a spare set of B grade pulleys, at least to prove the concept

I am looking forward to your tests!

[bamus]

There are more details of this mod on Carsten Arnholm's site, although I am not using the Astromeccanica kit, and my PE is a bit better than his.

interesting link, however trend in RA is rather not acceptable and difficult to eliminate (i think)

[malc-c]

I had to replace my PSU today so opted for one with a digital display of Volts and Amps.... amazingly, with both axis slewing the current draw was just 1.2A, which I beleive is slightly less than when the mount was gear driven. - Another plus point for belt drive

[Fred_76]

Hi

I found a similar kit in Hungary at Tavcso for about 100 EUR. This kit does not change the ratio of the original HEQ5 as the motor drive pulley has 9 teeths and the worm pulley 47 teeth.

It reduced the periodic error of my mount from +/-23 arcsec to +/- 11 arcsec. I still have problems due to a misdesign of the small pulleys (0.1 mm excentricity - see video - that generates a 122.2 s period oscillation in the periodic error with an amplitude of about 6-8 arcsec). Tavcso should send me better pulleys.

I wrote a small tutorial (in french, sorry) that shows all the steps of the mod and also the final periodic error.

Fred

[malc-c]

Fred, nice write up.

It seem strange that if you are manufacturing custom pulleys to maintain the 9:47 ratio so the handset can be used that the 5mm bore hole is of centre. My only other concern is that such a tight radius on the 9 tooth pulley could put excessive strain on the belt.

Did you have to do much fettering of the slots in the motor plates to get the tension correct or did it drop straight in ?