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EQ5 Mount

TheWelshMagician

By TheWelshMagician
in Discussions - Mounts

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ronin

ronin

Posted
Posted

Looking at FLO the upgrade kit is a nice round £300, the fully fitted EQ5 is £500 (-£1).

So I guess that you would save a little by buying the kit and fitting it rather then selling the present EQ5 and buying the complete item.

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RichM63

RichM63

Posted
Posted

Or if you don't mind complicating things a little, you could motorize your mount for around £100 inc simple hand controller then go for an AstroEQ from Tom Carpenter around £90 IIRC and use EQMOD and either Cartes du Ciel or Stellarium + Stellarium scope to have full control from your laptop.

Once everything is configured you will have full GOTO, via EQMOD+AstroEQ.

You will also have the possibility of upgrading the stepper motors at a later date without having to change the whole kit.

You could of course start out with different motors from the get go. 

Pop into the DIY Astronomer section and look at AstroEQ for EQ5  it is now a massive thread  but also look at the link in Tom's signature TCWORLD.

Cheers,

Richard

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Andy Milner

Andy Milner

Posted
Posted

Hi Richard. I'm wondering if my 200p maybe too heavy for my eq5 after reading many reports. Which stepper motor upgrade are you referring to? I have the SW dual axis motios and I have AstroEQ which I intend on using soon with cartes du ciel just like QM has been. I'm just wondering how easy a better motor set would be to fit? Especially for a beginner. And cost. And what would the benefit be would it be smoother and handle the weight well?

Cheers.

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RichM63

RichM63

Posted
Posted

Andy I'm planning on playing with the EQ5 this afternoon, adding weight to see if I can get better balance and stabilitiy.

I also have the SW motors on both mounts but if down the line I need to replace them, then I will not be buying a whole kit from SW as I don't need to waste money on another hand controller, power pack, cables etc. QM sold me a nice pair of SW motors for the EQ5 so I should be good for a while.

Not to hijack Magician's thread, I'll be posting a write up of my belt drive mods, once the belts and pulleys arrive (currently shipped).

The standard cog drive motors need to be moved further apart to accomodate standard belts / pulleys, initially due to a perceived lack of availability of seperate clutch drive assemblies.

Cheers,

Rich

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RichM63

RichM63

Posted
Posted

LOL welshmagic, OK so not a hijack, I made an observation whilst tinkering yesterday aft.

With the standard motor drive kit installed on the EQ5 I find it impossible to balance the mount correctly in DEC because the DEC motor housing makes contact with the RA hand screw extension shaft unless I completely flip the scope over and have the focuser pointing floorwards to acheive the horizontal TEE position.

Balancing in this position means that when I then return the scope to a normal home or observing position the arrived at balance is dangerously miles out and releasing the DEC clutch causes the OTA to go into free fall.

This I perceive to be a bad design fault the solution seems to be to remove about 8mm from the extraneous RA manual clutch extension gear shaft so that the DEC motor will clear.

With motors fitted there is no real need to acomodate a manual RA knob on this side of the scope.

It may be that SW have done away with this shaft on the new motor kits, but if not, take great care when trying to DEC balance if you have everything fitted.

Removing the RA clutch drive before trying to balance would also give clearance, but that's not really the point when you have fitted everything up and reset latitude.

Cheers,

Richard

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