Poorly Skytee II Mount

[ronin]

If you know anyone into metallergy and stress etc I would ask if they can identify the cause. Not sure if the appearance is a knock or a casting fault. Could be caused by that piece being gripped too tight and so a "creeping" fracture that when it managed to get all the way round the item gave up.

[Dave Lloyd]

Castings are brittle and I imagine these are made to a price. It does look like a stress fracture and although hard, castings have no tensile strength.

[chiltonstar]

Worth bouncing this one off SkyWatcher I would say, although without knowing the history of that particular mount (dropped?) the fault may be hard to find. Suggests poor quality control though, at least of the casting process.

Having said that, I was a bit surprised when a colleague knocked a chunk off my Vixen SP mount a few years back with his EP case - it was also a brittle casting (Al?). No doubt it's a common problem with anything made to a price.

I usually have a small tether on my 180 Mak which is looped around the mount head, so that if it slips out of the saddle (or something breaks!) the scope is stopped from hitting the deck.

Chris

[johninderby]

It's an old one. Think I was one of the very first to get one.  Plus it has seen it's share of mods. Adapted a Synscan EQ5 goto kit to it a few years ago to make it a proper GOTO mount. Worked very well but ended up removing the Synscan.

The castings are the same "quality" as the EQ5 and similar mounts so it's not as if this is a quality issue confined to the Skytee. As mentioned with it's replacement will be using lighter OTAs so should be fine.

           John

[RobertI]

Bad luck with the mount John but well done for catching the OTA. Although I don't believe the Skytee II uses very good materials, I'm inclined to think that something must have happened to it during your move - if it was an inherent problem you'd think that we would be hearing about shearing axes all the time? (unless we do and I am not aware if it?).   I was moving mine once and knocked it slighlty against the ground,  when I got indoors I saw I had completely bent one of the tightening bolts of the ADM clamp - the Skytee is such a heavy beast that it creates a lot of momentum when it moves and can cause a lot of damage if it hits something. Your story has made me slighly nervous as I have my C8 plus accessories (8kg?) and Tal100RS (5kg?) permanently set up on my  Skytee II ' for safety'.  But I think I will give the mount the benefit of the doubt. Enjoy the new mount.  

[johninderby]

It was moved twice during moving. Once to a storage unit and then to the new house.

As you say if this was a common problem you'd expect to have heard about it but I've never heard or read about it happening anywhere else.

An old SNT-10 OTA on the Skytee. Definately far too heavy for the Sky Tee. 

                John

[Alan White]

On 3/25/2017 at 11:16, johninderby said:

It's an old one. Think I was one of the very first to get one.  Plus it has seen it's share of mods. Adapted a Synscan EQ5 goto kit to it a few years ago to make it a proper GOTO mount. Worked very well but ended up removing the Synscan.

Sorry about the failure John.

Out of interest, why did you remove the Synscan modification that you did?

[johninderby]

Simply wasn't using the Synscan much and when the Az drive developed a slipping problem rather than replace that bit just removed the Synscan and sold it.

                John