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Celestron AVX Servicing


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I was forced into haviong to strip my AVX down a few weeks back.  Had a very unfortunate incident when the DEC axis froze solid.....then had to take the whole DEC AXIS off and find out what had gone wrong.

There is a thread on it here which as some pics in there...those of a nervous way, be warned, some are not very nice.

Managed to get it sorted in the end and replaced all the inner greases with a some teflon bike grease and since then it has been very smooth to move in the DECD axis.  Am very tempted now to do the RA axis, but am going to hold off for a while as have just got it all back together.

Have to say, I did not find it very difficult to to work on, but I have an engineering background, so can get my head around these things very easily.

Unfortunately I did not take any pics to do a guide while I was doing it....I was mainly concentrating on getting my mount back up and running

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1 hour ago, Shelster1973 said:

I was forced into haviong to strip my AVX down a few weeks back.  Had a very unfortunate incident when the DEC axis froze solid.....then had to take the whole DEC AXIS off and find out what had gone wrong.

There is a thread on it here which as some pics in there...those of a nervous way, be warned, some are not very nice.

Managed to get it sorted in the end and replaced all the inner greases with a some teflon bike grease and since then it has been very smooth to move in the DECD axis.  Am very tempted now to do the RA axis, but am going to hold off for a while as have just got it all back together.

Have to say, I did not find it very difficult to to work on, but I have an engineering background, so can get my head around these things very easily.

Unfortunately I did not take any pics to do a guide while I was doing it....I was mainly concentrating on getting my mount back up and running

Hi

Thanks for that! How is it performing now? It looked like some parts needed replacing? I've stripped down my heq5 before and also done the belt mod on it so I'm pretty fearless :) 

I'm a bit confused about the best grease to use. I've used tf2 white lithium before but it's not at all sticky and I'd say some stickiness is really needed. There seem to be lots of variations on tf2 though! Any recommendations gratefully received :)

Cheers

Louise

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Is working a dream now.  The DEC axis stickiion has all but gone.  Will never be fully gone due to it being a sleeve bearing, but it is no where near what it was.  You can see the latest PHD2 graph in this thread (also replaced my Az bolts with fine adjusters so I can dial in PA a lot more acurately.

As for grease, the one I got was this one.  It is sticky and does not run off, so works great.  Also put some under the mount when I remounted to help with the PA.....that worked good.

Edited by Shelster1973
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4 minutes ago, Shelster1973 said:

Is working a dream now.  The DEC axis stickiion has all but gone.  Will never be fully gone due to it being a sleeve bearing, but it is no where near what it was.  You can see the latest PHD2 graph in this thread (also replaced my Az bolts with fine adjusters so I can dial in PA a lot more acurately.

As for grease, the one I got was this one.  It is sticky and does not run off, so works great.  Also put some under the mount when I remounted to help with the PA.....that worked good.

Ok - thanks!

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1 hour ago, PeterCPC said:

Louise

When I regreased the cog wheels on mine I used Lubriplate 105 as I saw that it was recommended on here in other posts and Paramount use it apparently. It's a bit sticky.

Peter

Hi Peter

Oh ok - I just ordered some tf2 red bike grease before I saw your post! Hopefully, it'll do the job ok :)

Thanks anyway - I'll try your one if the tf2 isn't up to it!

Louise

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  • 1 year later...

Dave wood from darkframe ltd was interested in doing my avx a while back..i hesitated in getting it done as there was a issue with someone else's eq6 and I wasn't that happy the way he dealt with it so holding onto my £469 for the time being..yes you get stiction with all mounts but thinking how slow the gears turn it don't need to swing around like a sail.. but if you have £469 for a hypertune or £560 for the stellerdrive  burning a hole in your back pocket..

Edited by newbie alert
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Thre are a few pics (not for the squimish) in a post  I did a few months back when I stripped mine down here

Since then, I have done another strip down and replaced the bearings holding the worm gears and polished both of the worm gears and the toothed rotator collar part that the wom meshes onto.

Pics of that bit of fettling are below

59c2cb48bdc71_BodyPrePolish.thumb.jpg.91aeb7e5ae92c3f1a8c840f85402e85c.jpg59c2cb32a4621_BodyPolished.thumb.jpg.3f9cab33fdb8dba9e1eb34c3c90ac4cc.jpg59c2cb55d8689_Wormprepolish.thumb.jpg.753b6d7567c88a8932457e0d751a47c7.jpg59c2cb629a7fd_WormPolished.thumb.jpg.ac7e0adb711bb9809cef14d87af311e4.jpg

 

Since putting it back together, have not had a full chance to take any images due to stupidly poor weather and being away from home when the clouds have cleared, but the night I did get out was good......after some minor adjustments to the RA worm as it was slightly misaligned and too tight, so caused a few issues.  Was easy enough to adjust.  Just needed to slacken off on the Allen bolts holding it inplace and then adjust the grub screw to provide required pressures

My next plan, along with some imaging, is to measure the PE of the mount now that I have fettled with it.  Did not do that before, so have nothing to compare this too, but will have a reading that I can use to comare to others who have the mount and have  not carried out the drastic surgery that I have done

Edited by Shelster1973
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On ‎6‎/‎1‎/‎2016 at 07:34, PeterCPC said:

Louise

When I regreased the cog wheels on mine I used Lubriplate 105 as I saw that it was recommended on here in other posts and Paramount use it apparently. It's a bit sticky.

Peter

I wonder if Lubriplate 130A would work? Not sure how the consistency compares to 105, but it sure does well in my firearms. It's about like a heavy pudding, is Teflon based and doesn't get slung off the rollers or bolt carrier on the semi-auto rifles I use it on. I've never had it to dry out on a stored gun, either. It feels light enough that it wouldn't create drag on a slow moving gearset, but it has a great lubricity.

All this talk about AVX repairs has me a bit worried; I just bought one, all the advertising hype sounded good, and it was affordable. I have noticed, however, that when I assemble mine, specifically when I screw in the counterweight shaft, when it is snug, it creates a drag on the Dec axis. If I release the clutch and manually rotate the Dec axis, the counterweight shaft will loosen just a bit, and the axis is free, with little resistance. I have played with it several times and can't really pinpoint where the binding occurs, such as if it's the black collar and how it fits around the base of the mount body, or whether the shaft itself bottoms against something in the threaded hole. I plan to add a small washer in there and see if it will then tighten without binding. Anyone else have this issue? I was sort of surprised that the counterweight shaft rotates with the Dec axis, my (smaller and less heavy) last mount did not do this.

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On 18/09/2017 at 18:33, Thalestris24 said:

Hi

I did mine - there is info and pics here (not mine!) 

Louise

Thanks

all the time in past year looking for such and obviously not as much success.

the real question is: how much better is yours better now?

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 9/22/2017 at 22:07, iapa said:

Thanks

all the time in past year looking for such and obviously not as much success.

the real question is: how much better is yours better now?

Hi

I think it was improved - a bit! Trouble is cloud and other things conspire to prevent me from using it very much :(

Louise

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9 hours ago, Thalestris24 said:

Hi

I think it was improved - a bit! Trouble is cloud and other things conspire to prevent me from using it very much :(

Louise

I just took a trip to Loch Earn area, and, full moon and cloud has stopped doing anything

was hoping to het a set of baseline images and measurements

ah, well, I get a week in Perthshire, which can’t be bad - excluding any Astro work :) 

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On ‎21‎/‎09‎/‎2017 at 00:33, Luna-tic said:

I wonder if Lubriplate 130A would work? Not sure how the consistency compares to 105, but it sure does well in my firearms. It's about like a heavy pudding, is Teflon based and doesn't get slung off the rollers or bolt carrier on the semi-auto rifles I use it on. I've never had it to dry out on a stored gun, either. It feels light enough that it wouldn't create drag on a slow moving gearset, but it has a great lubricity.

All this talk about AVX repairs has me a bit worried; I just bought one, all the advertising hype sounded good, and it was affordable. I have noticed, however, that when I assemble mine, specifically when I screw in the counterweight shaft, when it is snug, it creates a drag on the Dec axis. If I release the clutch and manually rotate the Dec axis, the counterweight shaft will loosen just a bit, and the axis is free, with little resistance. I have played with it several times and can't really pinpoint where the binding occurs, such as if it's the black collar and how it fits around the base of the mount body, or whether the shaft itself bottoms against something in the threaded hole. I plan to add a small washer in there and see if it will then tighten without binding. Anyone else have this issue? I was sort of surprised that the counterweight shaft rotates with the Dec axis, my (smaller and less heavy) last mount did not do this.

This sounds very much like the issue I have / had. When I first got the mount the issue was not present but then one evening it started occuring for no apparent reason. If I rotate the DEC head the counterweight bar / weight would not rotate at the same rate meaning they would be left off centre. I have included the video below that I sent to Celestron to demonstrate the issue, is this what you are experiencing?

After many different ideas with the vendor it went back to Celestron. They could not see the problem and low and behold when I got it back the issue was still there...:hmh:
Tried different counterweight shafts and different 'Black Collars' (AKA Flowerpots). I can see a scoring inside the flowerpot so it seems to be rubbing on this.

The only way I solved this was to remove the collar (flowerpot) as my mount is well out of warranty, its not needed and is simply there for cosmetic reasons. Not something you want to hear on a brand new mount I suspect?
I would suggest arranging a replacment if it is brand new as I have never found a solution to this...

 

AVX_DEC_FAULT.mov

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6 hours ago, Droogie 2001 said:

This sounds very much like the issue I have / had. When I first got the mount the issue was not present but then one evening it started occuring for no apparent reason. If I rotate the DEC head the counterweight bar / weight would not rotate at the same rate meaning they would be left off centre. I have included the video below that I sent to Celestron to demonstrate the issue, is this what you are experiencing?

After many different ideas with the vendor it went back to Celestron. They could not see the problem and low and behold when I got it back the issue was still there...:hmh:
Tried different counterweight shafts and different 'Black Collars' (AKA Flowerpots). I can see a scoring inside the flowerpot so it seems to be rubbing on this.

The only way I solved this was to remove the collar (flowerpot) as my mount is well out of warranty, its not needed and is simply there for cosmetic reasons. Not something you want to hear on a brand new mount I suspect?
I would suggest arranging a replacment if it is brand new as I have never found a solution to this...

 

AVX_DEC_FAULT.mov

Someone on CN posted a similar issue and a respondent asked for pictures to show where it was occurring, to clarify things. I had done some experimenting after my last post above, and determined the "steps" in the counterweight rod cap and the "steps" in the mount housing were interfering due to insufficient clearance. I placed a 3mm thick washer in the bottom of the cap, and it fixed the issue by making a bit more room between the surfaces of the interfering steps.

DSC09941_LI.jpg

DSC09944_LI.jpg

DSC09945_LI.jpg

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Glad to hear you got it solved. Is my video showing the exact same issue you were having?

My flowerpot adapter shows heavy scoring inside but not sure if that is just because yours is newer? It is odd that from new yours is doing this, clearly a design flaw and not great for a new mount.
Maybe worth keeping and eye on as understandably the issue plays havok with your tracking.

Edited by Droogie 2001
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  • 3 years later...

Hi does anyone know what the RA/DE Gear Teeth count is on AVX mounts?

I am looking at an AVX with broken mobo, and thinking of making it work with my current DIY GoTo/tracking controller, but i need to replace the DC to stepper and need to know the RA/DE gear teeth counts to work out the steps/rotation. if i cannot find that  info i cannot confidently make the purchase as i donot intend to take the mount appart to count it and rather keep looking for heq5/eq6 which are well documented

Edited by rsarwar
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8 minutes ago, rsarwar said:

Hi does anyone know what the RA/DE Gear Teeth count is on AVX mounts?

I am looking at an AVX with broken mobo, and thinking of making it work with my current DIY GoTo/tracking controller, but i need to replace the DC to stepper and need to know the RA/DE gear teeth counts to work out the steps/rotation. if i cannot find that  info i cannot confidently make the purchase as i donot intend to take the mount appart to count it and rather keep looking for heq5/eq6 which are well documented

You may find that info on Celestron’s site.

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35 minutes ago, iapa said:

You may find that info on Celestron’s site.

i did check. it is not there. if there was a service manual probably it would be mentioned there - but cant see any. 

Edited by rsarwar
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