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Star Adventurer Insides


Shelster1973

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For those who have ever wondered what is going on inside the Skywatcher Star Adventurer, wonder no more.  Here is the mount, stripped down as far as I am willing to go.

1499839892_20190809-SATeardown-U.thumb.jpg.ee70b35be3c76b42c22c04d30f80394c.jpg

I have an issue with the SNAP port on mine in that it is very sporadic in its working.  Sometimes it will be fine and then others it will fire the camera but not hold the shutter open as it should.  I have tried replacing the 2.5mm socket with another, but to no avail.  Have contacted @FLO to see about getting a whole new port, harness and connector and am waiting to hear back on cost for this.

To get to the board that it connects to, you have to strip the mount down as far as I have above, as the worm / motor assembly gets in the way of the connector.  A very easy stripdown it is too.  4 x Allen screws take off the saddle.  You then fully unscrew the black clutch ring and remove it.  The roller thrust bearing then slips off to reveal the rotary gear.  4 x Allen screws set inside this remove it from the mount body.  The worm / motor assy is removed by 2 x countersunk Allen screws.

Was very pleasantly surprised to see the roller thrust bearing in there.  A very nice engineering touch.  The grease used is very light and they have not gone over the top with the use of it too.  I will be wiping all clean and using a teflon grease when I put it all back together.

Have left the polar scope fitted as I do not need to remove it to do the work I am doing and will also save me the hassle of getting it back in and collimated too.

If anyone wants any closeups of any of the parts while it is in this state, let me know and will take some and post here.

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  • 6 months later...

OK, nice insides, but could you give us more details than simple photos ?

- number of teeth of each spur gear

- diameter of spur gears

- reference of the DC motor (if any)

- reference of the gearbox (if any) or at least if you can unscrew its cap, a detailed photo of the internals

- reference of all roller bearings of at least shaft diameter, external diameter, thickness and number of balls/cylinders

All the best

 

Fred

Edited by Fred_76
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Fred

Was not that focused on grabbing such detailed info whe i did my first teardown, sorry, but as I have to go back in for some minor tinkering that I want to do to the power solution I have, will get the info and post back on here, along with any more detailed phots that I take along the way.

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Had mine in bits a couple of times.

Funny enough the last time was indeed a faulty snap port. Managed to repair it, but it's a pretty cheaply made component to begin with. 

One word if advice is go easy with the grease upon reassembly, as too much causes further problems.

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  • 2 years later...

Thanks for the info, I have this same model and its not working correctly, on x12 times it moves forward for about 2 secs then reverses for a sec then stops, i have looked at the inners and found no obstructions . Question where could you buy a new geared motor from ?

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Hi there 

sorry, but no idea where you could get a geared motor from 

have you looked at the grub screw that sits on top of the worm gear? When I put mine back together, this needed adjusting a few times so that it did not cause a bind and stop the turning

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On 09/08/2019 at 17:53, knobby said:

Nice one, stripped my SAM recently as stuttering, nicely engineered aren't they. (No pics as I forgot)

Speaking as an Engineer, no they are not :)

Forgive me, I had one, it's a personal bugbear of mine

As delivered new it was missing the 4 screws that hold the RA wheel in place. They had super - glued it instead. It's made out of cheese grade aluminium to very poor tolerances. The mount wobbled about on the wedge, necessitating shimming the wedge. Sneeze and it would lose polar alignment. 

Just my own personal experience, and there seems to be plenty of happy owners out there. For wide angle it works fine, assuming you don't pull the short QC straw.

 

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