Ogem mount - still vapour-ware or have they started shipping

[NovaTJ]

There is an update from JTW received by my friend. Since the message is not addressed directly to my friend, I will repost here. It sounds positive so I have my hopes up!

"

"Hi Everyone,

I hope all had a happy new year! It was a tough year but 2020 is already looking to be a great year. I took the liberty of a full Christmas vacation, which is quite a rare treat as we usually have to squeeze in our machine maintenance over Christmas, I was sure no one would begrudge me this, we were all pretty burned out. It's fantastic to be back at work with a spring in our step and full of motivation.

To summarise this email, we're now proceeding with the Tridents that have absolute encoders. There have been no surprises and our hybrid ceramic drive works great. The project is now on the home strait. I believe I owe everyone a more in depth mail, so here it is -

I'd like to thank everyone again for their patience. I know that this feels like an eternity, let's be honest - it is. I have been made aware of some less than favorable forum posts at the moment, this is perfectly reasonable with such a delay. I would be skeptical too if I wasn't fully versed on the situation. I'd like to state that we could have shipped out OGEMs almost a year ago and I'm sure a lot of you would have been happy with them. However, we know what friction drive is capable of and rather than send you something like an EQ6 on steroids, we made the decision to send you an instrument with premium performance instead, something that you will be proud of, enjoy to use and will still be working perfectly 15 years from now. This was never about a quick buck for us, we take pride in what we do and we want to be known as a company with integrity that delivers premium products. We will never be a high speed production environment.

The delay was the necessary 2 steps back to take 10 steps forwards. One of our commercial clients has ordered 12 more Tridents based on the performance of the ceramic prototype (too ugly to send to an Early Bird or sell!), they will be phasing out Mesu and Paramounts for the Trident, this was a very nice compliment when we received this info. This order surely wouldn't have come had we fobbed everyone off with an OGEM & called it a day. Details will be on our social media once Early Birds are all taken care of & these 12 will be publicly available.

If you followed our social media you'll know that we had the standard colour parts repainted due to battleship grey being a bit of a flop along with the mounts in custom colours. We didn't get these parts back in time to do much before the holiday period. I'll get some photos taken next week. The documentation is almost complete now, big thanks to all who have contributed and given feedback on this.

This is a nice email to write, as we are now on to the Tridents with encoders, the majority of you have taken encoders.

The situation now is as follows -

• The Tridents with ceramic/hybrid drive are working perfectly. We consider this a proven system now.
• We can proceed with assembling and shipping out the Tridents with absolute encoders
• The project is finally approaching completion & we will never buy a design from a 3rd party ever, ever, ever again. No, seriously.
• People who ordered telescopes will receive a 400 mm f/9 Cassegrain (with top notch optics) as a loan instrument while their ordered instrument is completed, of course free of costs, we will also pay the return shipping.
• Telescopes that have been ordered are already in manufacture. They were scheduled to be finished by now but the necessity to change controller and redesign the drive completely ruined 2019 for us.
• The Tridents with encoders will ship out this month

There is only one caveat and it's pretty minor. The Sitech controller needs an additional piece of hardware to interface with the absolute encoders we are using. They save a fortune compared to Renishaw and still give respectable performance. Sitech have been very busy last year and the additional hardware to allow these encoders to be used will be ready some time this month.

We will ship the mounts out with encoders preinstalled and aligned, tested in factory with our own custom jig. You will receive a cable and small box about a month from now, simply connect the encoders to the controller and they will just work, no tools needed, no updates or firmware flashing, just plug and play. This is unavoidable due to the encoders having an unusual protocol and I think is a good way to keep things moving.

Finally now that we have a friction drive with premium performance and significantly more grip than any other friction drive on the market (so much so, it doesn't need a brake) & will soon be looking at the Early Bird Tridents & telescope orders in the rear view mirror, our next project is the Kraken 35, a portable Trident derivative to carry 35 kg photographically.

Any questions or comments please just ask!
Mark"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Neil27]

That sounds great NovaTJ, hope your friend receives it soon and has many years of enjoyment with it.

If it succeeds we have another quality high performance mount to choose from which can only benefit us, the end user.

Along with the usual suspects I have a keen eye on this mount to see how they perform in the field, I truly hope it’s a success.

[cotak]

Yep. The litmus test awaits.

[Northernlight]

Hi Nova,

I hope this is finally the end of the wait for the patient customers who pre-ordered, but I'm still a bit sceptical as there always seems to be another reason why its delayed.

Don't get me wrong, I applaud Mark for his integrity and not releasing a design that he doesn't feel is ready yet, but at some point you needs to stop tweaking and chasing utopia as you might never get there.

Let's hope he doesn't hit more snags with new version of the absolute encoders

Rich.

[newbie alert]

On 19/01/2020 at 22:47, Northernlight said:

Let's hope he doesn't hit more snags with new version of the absolute encoders

That should of been sorted out way before he started taking orders of them.. not asked for full payment on a cad drawing

 

[Northernlight]

The problem i have with JTW, is that they essential sold an idea to people in the disguise of a real product and the proof  of this is that the current design bares no resemblance to the original sold design and their price is now pretty much double he original stated price. In my mind JTW has been very unethical in their approach and tricked potential customers into essentially funding the design of a prototype.

Lets be honest here, for £5,000 pounds i'd rather pay a little extra and get the tried and tested Mesu mount, a real product that exists and will actually be delivered to you once you've paid for it.

I genuinely worry for the people who paid for pre-orders from JTW.

 

Edited January 23, 2020 by Northernlight

[newbie alert]

On 16/01/2020 at 02:19, NovaTJ said:

There is an update from JTW received by my friend. Since the message is not addressed directly to my friend, I will repost here. It sounds positive so I have my hopes up!

"

"Hi Everyone,

I hope all had a happy new year! It was a tough year but 2020 is already looking to be a great year. I took the liberty of a full Christmas vacation, which is quite a rare treat as we usually have to squeeze in our machine maintenance over Christmas, I was sure no one would begrudge me this, we were all pretty burned out. It's fantastic to be back at work with a spring in our step and full of motivation.

To summarise this email, we're now proceeding with the Tridents that have absolute encoders. There have been no surprises and our hybrid ceramic drive works great. The project is now on the home strait. I believe I owe everyone a more in depth mail, so here it is -

I'd like to thank everyone again for their patience. I know that this feels like an eternity, let's be honest - it is. I have been made aware of some less than favorable forum posts at the moment, this is perfectly reasonable with such a delay. I would be skeptical too if I wasn't fully versed on the situation. I'd like to state that we could have shipped out OGEMs almost a year ago and I'm sure a lot of you would have been happy with them. However, we know what friction drive is capable of and rather than send you something like an EQ6 on steroids, we made the decision to send you an instrument with premium performance instead, something that you will be proud of, enjoy to use and will still be working perfectly 15 years from now. This was never about a quick buck for us, we take pride in what we do and we want to be known as a company with integrity that delivers premium products. We will never be a high speed production environment.

The delay was the necessary 2 steps back to take 10 steps forwards. One of our commercial clients has ordered 12 more Tridents based on the performance of the ceramic prototype (too ugly to send to an Early Bird or sell!), they will be phasing out Mesu and Paramounts for the Trident, this was a very nice compliment when we received this info. This order surely wouldn't have come had we fobbed everyone off with an OGEM & called it a day. Details will be on our social media once Early Birds are all taken care of & these 12 will be publicly available.

If you followed our social media you'll know that we had the standard colour parts repainted due to battleship grey being a bit of a flop along with the mounts in custom colours. We didn't get these parts back in time to do much before the holiday period. I'll get some photos taken next week. The documentation is almost complete now, big thanks to all who have contributed and given feedback on this.

This is a nice email to write, as we are now on to the Tridents with encoders, the majority of you have taken encoders.

The situation now is as follows -

• The Tridents with ceramic/hybrid drive are working perfectly. We consider this a proven system now.
• We can proceed with assembling and shipping out the Tridents with absolute encoders
• The project is finally approaching completion & we will never buy a design from a 3rd party ever, ever, ever again. No, seriously.
• People who ordered telescopes will receive a 400 mm f/9 Cassegrain (with top notch optics) as a loan instrument while their ordered instrument is completed, of course free of costs, we will also pay the return shipping.
• Telescopes that have been ordered are already in manufacture. They were scheduled to be finished by now but the necessity to change controller and redesign the drive completely ruined 2019 for us.
• The Tridents with encoders will ship out this month

There is only one caveat and it's pretty minor. The Sitech controller needs an additional piece of hardware to interface with the absolute encoders we are using. They save a fortune compared to Renishaw and still give respectable performance. Sitech have been very busy last year and the additional hardware to allow these encoders to be used will be ready some time this month.

We will ship the mounts out with encoders preinstalled and aligned, tested in factory with our own custom jig. You will receive a cable and small box about a month from now, simply connect the encoders to the controller and they will just work, no tools needed, no updates or firmware flashing, just plug and play. This is unavoidable due to the encoders having an unusual protocol and I think is a good way to keep things moving.

Finally now that we have a friction drive with premium performance and significantly more grip than any other friction drive on the market (so much so, it doesn't need a brake) & will soon be looking at the Early Bird Tridents & telescope orders in the rear view mirror, our next project is the Kraken 35, a portable Trident derivative to carry 35 kg photographically.

Any questions or comments please just ask!
Mark"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hi NovaTJ, has your friend recieved or even had any acknowledgement from Mark in the last month? Reading through the blurb it sounds to me like Mark has taken too much on and letting too many people that have PAID IN FULL down..not only ones that have ordered mounts but scopes also..

Also in the blurb it says that the updates will be on social media? Not seen any personally myself... Is there anyone that either knows someone that has one of these mounts, or has had one delivered?

Do they actually exist in the flesh or are they just a cad drawing?

Sounds like things have gone rather quiet again

[Northernlight]

JTW is not helping itself. They had a bad reputation in the past for Poor Quality Control on Modified DSLR's and now I would say they now have an extremely poor reputation for customer Service.  I just hope they dont go out of business before they deliver the goods as something just feels off, not quite right.

They really dont do themselves any favours.

[newbie alert]

20 hours ago, Northernlight said:

JTW is not helping itself. They had a bad reputation in the past for Poor Quality Control on Modified DSLR's and now I would say they now have an extremely poor reputation for customer Service.  I just hope they dont go out of business before they deliver the goods as something just feels off, not quite right.

They really dont do themselves any favours.

Poor quality control? I'd not heard of that one

Poor customer service, most  definately..do they have a customer service??

When or IF my friend finally gets his it better be more than just superb for the amount of time he's waited, and paid in full on order I should add...seems criminal

[Avdhoeven]

I just noticed this post in another topic from Merlin66: It's a long and painful story.... but just let's say JTW are no longer licensed to manufacture the Spectra-L200, and I haven't as yet found a replacement manufacturer.

 

Sounds worrying...

[newbie alert]

46 minutes ago, Avdhoeven said:

I just noticed this post in another topic from Merlin66: It's a long and painful story.... but just let's say JTW are no longer licensed to manufacture the Spectra-L200, and I haven't as yet found a replacement manufacturer.

 

Sounds worrying...

Where is this post please?

[Merlin66]

 

[Northernlight]

If it were me in this situation, I would be demanding my money back and buying a Mesu instead.

[phill76]

Hi all. 

I have been watching this thread for some time now and due to my involvement i have tried to keep quiet and not upset the apple cart.

Newbie alert was talking about me when he says he has a mate that had paid in full for its a very very long story and 63 emails later i still don't have my mount. 

In all fairness to Mark. i completely understand his issues and i have spoken with him on the phone about this whole saga and also what's been said in here and a few other places and he is aware and trying to do something about it.

So way back in March, i saw this mount on their website and thought i like the looks of this, all looked great. I first did some googling,found a few concerning posts/threads, like this one and i decided to email JTW and we started discussing the mount (OGEM) it was called back then. We spoke about these forum posts and i was reassured that the mount was all go and in production and he sent me a load of images of the parts etc.

Now i am a spur of the moment guy, i see something and if i want it then i want it and then my mind is set, i was convinced it was all good.  I had a few issues with cash and i wanted so i decided to just go WTH and stuck it on my credit card.  (oh dear i hear you all say)

i though thats fine i will just pay that off over a year and its not that bad.  Anyways, Paid. i think £3900 and was told delivery just after ATT which was May 17th i think. well that date rolled by and i started thinking wheres my mount and i had a lot of thoughts of what to do, i emailed, got no response for ages until i sent a strongly worded email and was then told another date in July and on it went. I ended up completely loosing my temper at Mark and lots of emails back and forth and he explained all the issues they were having and i explained the complete lack of communication was abysmal and i was at a point of wanting my cash back. 

Mark kindly agreed to fully upgrade "my" mount for free as i had only paid for the basic one, That's all i could afford. My argument was that he had sold me a mount that was as i suspected from the start as still in development and i was basically an early bird adopter that had paid full price . . He added me to the general mailing list for the "early birds" and in fairness to him, the communication got much better.  there was times where we went 2 months with no updates and again he got a crappy email from me detailing my displeasure and in the end we had a phonecall and i will get to the end of this soon. 

I personally think  that Mark should never have taken my money when he did almost 1yr ago to the day and just said that the early birds are all sold out and i would have to wait.  I can see why he did and he kinda took a gamble rather than loose a customer. his gamble was that he thought the OGEM was almost ready when truth be told as soon as they started testing they came upon massive problems and their own cost which has most likely put massive strain on him and his team for cashflow and upholding their promises to the early birds and ME, their first actual paying customer of this mount.

i see lots of negative comments in here and at the end of the day, the only people that really and truthfully have the right to complain are those of us that have parted cash and i don't think there is one in this whole thread until now that has stood up. 

I think Mark and his team are doing a great job in bringing a new mount to our community that can only help drive prices down for all. It's unfortunate all the time and miscomunications , some might say lies but i think put yourselves in his shoes and then mine. I paid 4k on a credit card, i am still paying it off now so its over 5k easily it's cost me and yes i could have just got a Mesu for that but i am just thankful that it is coming to an end and i will finally get to enjoy my mount. 

So i had an email yesterday. The mounts are coming to completion and i will post the whole email under this to show. 

Greetings everyone!

Ok here goes…

It’s finally done!

Glad that’s out the way but seriously this one, after some final touches, is leaving on Friday to be installed. I'll send you pictures once it's installed with all the accompanying tracking graphs, pictures of the night sky and star shapes from 1800s subs etc. Suffice to say it works and tracks like a dream.

This was what you all purchased way back in the distant past, if your memories can stretch back that long -

This is where we are now, yes you may have invested in an OGEM but this is about as far removed from an OGEM as chalk and cheese. I am not going to bore you with the bumpy road we've all had to get to this point, as we all are painfully aware of the timescales and bruises we carry.

 

Once this mount is installed and I have done as I said above, I will begin shipping

As much as I have kept you waiting when it arrives and your happy please please post pictures of the mount and images you take as this project has nearly killed me to get to this stage and although some of you are paved your help once you are happy would be much appreciated.

Humble thanks

Mark

  

I have been told that i am not getting this version but the full on production version and he has sent me an image but also asked me not to share it about just yet so i feel that my patience will be paid off. 

This is my first post in here, I have long been a member of this forum but i don't normally get involved except this project affected me quite a lot and although i have held back a few times from posting my frustration and now feel that it was the right time to say something. 

I honestly feel that JTW are really on to something here and they like any developer have had to spend the time to get it right. yes their reputation may be tarnished by all these delays but once the mounts start getting turned out and the reports come back good ( because they have spent the time ironing issues out) that their reputation will soon be turned around and it may make other crazy expensive manufacturers start to look at their prices. 

The only thing they really did wrong was sell a mount to me ( i dont know is they have sold any others like me) because the rest were early birds paying a far cheaper price and knowingly getting involved in pretty much a "kickstarter" campaign so with them you pay, and you wait. 

Im sure this post will spark many debate but i had to come and tell you of my sometimes really annoying year but also the good that should come of it. 

 

Kind regards

Phill

 

http://www.facebook.com/buck1andAstro/

 

 

 

[Michael Hogan]

 As someone who just got my final dream mount that i used to dream about having the 10 Micron GM2000 HPS II this week i want to see this OGEM mount be a massive

success if this is really the final mount it looks very nice just like the MESU mount

[Skipper Billy]

If I was Lucas Mesu I would be talking to copyright/patent lawyers right now........

[Merlin66]

Hmmmm

Like worm and wheel drives the friction disk drive has been around for a long long time.

Don’t think you can patent a well known drive system.

 

[tooth_dr]

1 hour ago, Skipper Billy said:

If I was Lucas Mesu I would be talking to copyright/patent lawyers right now........

Funny my first thought it looks a lot like a mesu.  

[steppenwolf]

2 hours ago, Skipper Billy said:

If I was Lucas Mesu I would be talking to copyright/patent lawyers right now........

Yup me too but more copyright than patent!

[andrew s]

If I were Joseph von Fraunhofer I would ge after the lot of them.

Regards Andrew 

[Northernlight]

Well despite what it looks like - it's nice to see that peop,e might finally get a mount they paid for, even if it does look like a Mesu clone

I really hope it works well  for those early adopters - 

[Physopto]

I have just come across this thread about JTW mounts.

Unfortunately I had a very bad experience with JTW.

I asked if they could manufacture some parts for me that I has designed for adapting my new (second hand) Tak 85. They agreed and I submitted the plans for them to sort out for CNC machining. In due course they submitted their computer generated drawings for the fabrication of the parts. Everything looked great. Then I was given their price for the job. Upon looking at the costs, I realized that I did not look right. It looked far too cheap for the amount of work involved. I discussed this via email with the owner and he realized that he had mistaken the number of parts and submitted a revised cost. This looked fair and we agreed to proceed.

 That was the real start of problems. Over some months I got various excuses for things not proceeding to schedule. Falling down stairs,  mix ups with machining and many more!

In the end several months and many emails about my order I was told they were ready to send out to me. (I had paid the whole  cost up front via Paypal).

Anyway, after it must have been 8/9 months the parts arrived. The CNC machining and anodizing was extremely well done.  As an ex marine engineer for over 24 years I know what I am looking at.

BUT one part had been machined incorrectly! The attachment holes were on the wrong side (back to front).

It was the adapter that bolted on to my QSI CCD camera. Many emails later I just had to give up. In the end he just would not respond at all.

I  had to machine the screw holes from the other side to adapt the part to fit correctly myself. Obviously that side is now not anodized but there was enough metal to do it.

 

All I can say is beware of JTW Astronomy.

It is a shame as he can do good work but just does not look into things properly and the back up is abysmal.

I have not posted comments on JTW Astronomy before as I was far too upset and fed up by the end of dealings, but there are numerous complaints on other Astronomy forums if you care to look.

If anyone is interested I can email the drawings to them on the parts I wanted for the project. As I said, it was to fit a QSI CCD to a Baby Q / Takahashi 85mm. But it includes the ability to fit or not using a spacer a SXV-AO-LF 'Adaptive Optics made by SDtarlight Xpress. I had to calculate the exact back focus as all spacing is taken up for this setup.

I can't remember the exact number of parts but 8/9.

I think I paid around 700 Euro.

If he had finished the job correctly without all the time wasting and failure in the end to sort the problem out ,I would have been nothing but complimentary.

Derek

[Northernlight]

I was due to buy a scope from jtw when I got a message from a known APM distributor who warned me against this. He said that jtw had been contracted to do work for APM and did not honor the contractual obligations and was in the process of being taken to court.

I have no way of verifying if this was true, but for an apm reseller to go to the effort to warn me suggests that there may have been some element of truth to the story as mark did mention to me at one point that he did work for apm.

[Physopto]

20 minutes ago, Northernlight said:

I was due to buy a scope from jtw when I got a message from a known APM distributor who warned me against this. He said that jtw had been contracted to do work for APM and did not honor the contractual obligations and was in the process of being taken to court.

I have no way of verifying if this was true, but for an apm reseller to go to the effort to warn me suggests that there may have been some element of truth to the story as mark did mention to me at one point that he did work for apm.

If you want I can show you every email I have that was passed between me and JTW. Not pretty reading!

[newbie alert]

3 hours ago, steppenwolf said:

Yup me too but more copyright than patent!

Lucus is aware of the similarities of the Trident mounts..

He says while the look like a mesu on the outside, they're not mesu on the inside and then wishes mark the best in his future projects..