Grease ?

[SteveA]

There was some discussion some while ago around the best sort of grease to use when stripping down and tuning an EQ6. I serviced my mount a couple of years back and at the time the received wisdom focused on white lithium grease, which I used. I get the feeling that this stuff has now fallen from grace and I wondered what the latest "best" advice is on the type of grease to use?

I've been playing around with my mount over the summer and as the weather continues to be poor I thought I may actually bite the bullet and replace the bearings and re-grease the thing (though I notice that no sooner have I had that thought the sun comes out!).

Any ideas out there?

Steve

 

[davyludo]

Hi Steve, 

Don't have an EQ but when I asked about grease for my AZ4 it was suggested I use superlube. I ordered a tube and it took ages to come (didn't realise it was coming from America). Alternatively in the UK you can get TF2 which is also a Teflon grease. 

Hopefully someone who knows about EQ mounts will come along soon and confirm this is also ok for your mount. 

First time I did mine I used a general purpose lithium grease (kind used for cars). It worked alright - wasn't as smooth as the superlube though.

[Alien 13]

I like the sticky black stuff that skywatcher provide 

Alan 

[SteveA]

I noticed that Rother Valley carry a selection of grease from Geoptik and Badder. And although there is clearly some money to be made in selling little pots of grease for lots of money I'm left wondering if I should consider any of these. The Badder products are £9 for a 10cc pot, whilst the Geoptik kit comes with two 80ml pots for £18. Neither is particularly cheap but the Geoptik kit looks like slightly better value.

The Geoptik kit includes two differnet types of grease, apparently the gears and bearings requiring different types? 

http://www.rothervalleyoptics.co.uk/geoptik-equatorial-mount-grease-kit.html

Whilst Badder have several grades which as well as being temperature specific seem to have charecteristics better suited to varying quality mounts

http://www.rothervalleyoptics.co.uk/baader-ultra-range-machine-grease-from-50c-up-to-60c.html

Baader #1 Teflon-brown: from -15°C up to +55°C:Very good dampening characteristics, very suited for enabling "less than perfect" mount drives to run smoothly. Not suitable for permanent use below -10 °C.

Baader #2 Teflon-white: from -25°C up to +40°:This is the grease Baader use the most when refurbishing quality mounts – with brilliant slipping-properties, ultra low slip-stick tendency and longlife-stability – suitable for all European temperature-ranges.

Baader #3 Arctic-cool: from -55°up to +30°C:Excellent grease quality for low temperature application as prevalent at polar-circle regions – not suitable for permanent use at temperatures above 25°C

Baader #4 Ultra-Range: from -50°C up to +60°C:Wide stretched synthetic grease with constant viscosity across an extremely large temperature-range. Especially suitable for use in the mirror sliding fittings of SC-telescopes (i.e. Celestron), as the grease does not produce any outgassing, does not react to vapour pressure, does not harden over time and does not decompose into a solid and a liquid part over time.

Has anyone used any of these products?

[D Wright]

When I strpped my Vixen GP down I was stuck with which grease to use and not having a lot of money I looked at cheap ways of doing this. I ended up going to my local garage and getting one of the little packets of grease that come with the CV boot. It is grey but it is lithium grease and it was free. I greased the mount with it and put it back together. That was about a year ago. I have had the mount out in temperatures well below zero and have never had any problems. The mount is still as smooth as it was.

[Peter Drew]

As a rule of thumb, the lower the quality of the mount, the heavier the grease it needs.  

[newbie alert]

Mr darkframe don't use lithium grease..he uses something that costs a fortune for not a lot.. 

[SteveA]

3 minutes ago, newbie alert said:

Mr darkframe don't use lithium grease..he uses something that costs a fortune for not a lot.. 

I wonder what grease that is then?

It was a throw away comment on another thread from Dark Frame along the lines of "lithium grease will fail after 18 months" that got me thinking about this in the first place. I guess as its been a couple of years since I greased up with white lithium grease, so maybe  I'll be able to tell when I strip the thing down if in fact it has failed (though I doubt I would know what failed grease looks like?). I'm only considering all of this as I've seen a significant amount of backlash return to the mount and I've been unable to tune this out by simple adjustments so a strip down seems like the best route.

Steve

[SteveA]

18 minutes ago, Peter Drew said:

As a rule of thumb, the lower the quality of the mount, the heavier the grease it needs.  

I must admit, the white lithium grease I used last time around did seem relatively "thin", certainly compared to the sticky brown Skywatcher stuff I removed. I never really gave much thought to the fact that there were probably different grades of grease. I'm beginning to think that the stuff I used was not really up to the job in the first place.

Steve

[Peter Drew]

Personally. I would use white lithium grease or similar only on precision parts such as ball/roller races. For plain metal to metal surfaces a heavy, sticky grease is best. I expect to find the latter in a EQ5, the former in a Paramount.  

[SteveA]

I bit the bullet and ordered the Geoptik grease!

I'll let you all know what this stuff is like when it comes through

Steve

[pete_l]

5 hours ago, SteveA said:

It was a throw away comment on another thread from Dark Frame along the lines of "lithium grease will fail after 18 months" that got me thinking about this in the first place.

If you want to scare yourself about grease, have a look at this: http://www.machinerylubrication.com/Read/28517/grease-dry-out-causes

I assume the main thrust of the article is about high-speed lubrication. But I was not aware that grease could dry out, nor that it was possible to over-grease something. Maybe the expensive stuff is worth the money ...

[newbie alert]

Not sure about over greasing but you can definitely over oil a bearing..

Again Mr darkframe pic on lithium grease

[ronin]

Slightly unrelated but years ago I worked on a defence project that had a grease problem, a silicon grase. The problem was the motors ran, got to 100C and the grease seperated. The solvent ran out leaving the silicon bit behind. This then promptly became a nice fine grinding dust and that was the end of the motor.

I found 2 greases that were "high" specification, Dow Corning I think, but not cheap. In the early 80's a 70ml tube was £82 . Past them to the Chemi-Met lab for testing. After 2 weeks of test they reported back that nothing they had done to either grease altered the properties of them.

We specified the most costly one to replace the "standard" item and paid for it to be use. Will say the equipment it went into was £500,000 a piece at that time.

[1parsec]

I use Aeroshell32ms grease when regreasing the worm / wheel gears on my mount.  ( It's now called Aeroshell 64)

You can order it from Transair  -

http://www.transair.co.uk/sp+AeroShell-Grease-AEROSHELL-Grease-64-400gm-Cartridge-MIL-G-21164D-DEF-STAN-91-57+2938

£20 for a 400g cartridge 

It's what Astro-Physics use in their mounts :-)

[SteveA]

The Geoptik grease arrived today. Two small but adequate containers with with the type 1 and type 2 grease. The type 1 grease which is a dark green colour is apparently for the worm and gears. The type 2 which is a pale brown/cream colour is for the shafts and bearings. The green stuff seems slightly more sticky, but that's  just from the good old "stick finger in the pot test"

Steve

[tooth_dr]

On 15/08/2017 at 14:39, SteveA said:

The Geoptik grease arrived today. Two small but adequate containers with with the type 1 and type 2 grease. The type 1 grease which is a dark green colour is apparently for the worm and gears. The type 2 which is a pale brown/cream colour is for the shafts and bearings. The green stuff seems slightly more sticky, but that's  just from the good old "stick finger in the pot test"

Steve

How's it working out? I'm about to order Superlube but coukd order the geoptik stuff instead?

[tooth_dr]

Spotted this in Halfords:

http://www.halfords.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductMobileDisplay?catalogId=10151&langId=-1&categoryId=317974&productId=1146209&storeId=10001

[Dave In Vermont]

53 minutes ago, tooth_dr said:

Spotted this in Halfords:

http://www.halfords.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductMobileDisplay?catalogId=10151&langId=-1&categoryId=317974&productId=1146209&storeId=10001

That would likely be the equivalent of SuperLube Telflon (PTFE) grease. As a bike-mechanic, I've opened-up high-stress & pressure places on bicycles (Like the bottom-bracket - where the pedals go through the bottom on the frame) and found 20 year-old SuperLube-type grease. It was still fine and doing it's job. I wouldn't hesitate to use that stuff you have linked above. Just be sparing using grease. Many people assume "If a little's good, more's better!" WRONG. Too much = it goes directly to where you don't want it to!

Dave

[tooth_dr]

Thanks @Dave In Vermont I'll give this stuff a go. 

[Dave In Vermont]

Just now, tooth_dr said:

Thanks @Dave In Vermont I'll give this stuff a go. 

My pleasure!

Dave

[SteveA]

On 9 September 2017 at 08:41, tooth_dr said:

How's it working out? I'm about to order Superlube but coukd order the geoptik stuff instead?

I'm still trying to coordinate some spare time with poor weather. Unfortunately or fortunately, every time I get some time off work the weather improves and I can't bring myself to take the mount apart and miss out on actually getting out in the garden and taking some images. So far the grease hasn't been used?

Steve

[tooth_dr]

1 hour ago, SteveA said:

I'm still trying to coordinate some spare time with poor weather. Unfortunately or fortunately, every time I get some time off work the weather improves and I can't bring myself to take the mount apart and miss out on actually getting out in the garden and taking some images. So far the grease hasn't been used?

Steve

I was gonna strip mine last night, but I ended up rewiring the shed and adding new screw on terminals to my 12v leads!  We've had two weeks of rain forecast so I'm gonna aim to get it done this week.  I found synthetic grease with PTFE (like superlube I guess, so I will give that a go.  Thanks for your reply!

[Peter Drew]

1 hour ago, SteveA said:

I'm still trying to coordinate some spare time with poor weather. Unfortunately or fortunately, every time I get some time off work the weather improves and I can't bring myself to take the mount apart and miss out on actually getting out in the garden and taking some images. So far the grease hasn't been used?

Steve

If buying the grease is all it takes to keep the clouds at bay then it's worth every penny!