iOptron ZEQ25GT RA Motor overcurrent

[astronomer2002]

I have had my ZEQ25 for a long time and it has worked well until last night when suddenly I get the message RA overcurrent and it stopped.

The mount is well balanced and I am using it for widefield imaging with a 65mm apo so not too much weight. Even with the clutch disengaged the problem occurs immediately you start up the mount.

It seems there is little chance of getting help from iOptron so I wonder if anyone here has any advice or perhaps a spare motor. I thought of looking at the cem25 upgrade kit, which replaces the motors and control boards, but these are unavailable. Perhaps someone who has upgraded theirs has an old motor they would be prepared to sell?

It's a bit of a longshot but I really hate the idea of putting a nearly £1000 mount into landfill for the sake of a £10 motor failure let alone the replacement cost.

 

Thanks for looking

 

Ian B

 

 

[Dr_Ju_ju]

I don't have or know your mount, but why do think its the motor at fault ??  Do you get the same result, if you remove the drive cable, from the control box ? and\or the motor itself ? 

have you tried swapping the RA & DEC motors ? are all the cables ok ? .....      

[astronomer2002]

Julian,

Thankyou for your reply. I am sure it is the RA motor. I removed the motor from the mount and connected it with no load. Immediately get the issue. Removed the gearbox from the motor and on startup it spins for 1-2 secs at a low slew rate and then get the "RA overcurrent" message. Before that I tried swapping the dec drive over to the RA and that worked - until I tried moving in dec!

I also tried just disconnecting the RA motor cable. The mount started up and moved in Dec but obviously didn't respond to RA requests. No error was returned with the RA motor disconnected even when asking it to fast slew so it looks like the motor is the issue.

I took the gearbox off because I thought it might be the culprit since I heard a bit of a graunch when the RA started up, immediately before failing. With the gearbox off the motor juddered for a couple of seconds and did actually turn, but this behavior really only confirmed the issue was going to be the motor itself.

 

Ian B