Just purchased a Celestron C14 orange tube

[Chrb1985]

Hi! I just purchased this scope and it will be delivered tomorrow. Id like to ask you guys for alle the help info you can provide me with please. I will attach the pictures i got of it. My concerns are of course the mirrors and the corrector plate and im considering cutting 3hiles in the rear for vents with filters 12v and one in front, mabye som more holes to lighten the weight? And i plan dissasemble the whole thing and grease the threads and clean the inter thing inside with kirros and maby add some dark "tape" since i herad this is a smart thing to do whilst ut is already open. Please weigh in here. Whats smart, and whats not. I paln to use it on mye big steel pier (4legs with adjustment in each meg) and the Neq6pro upgraded with e6 motherboard etc or the ioptron Hae 43. I know both mount have weight limitations of 20kgs and ice estimater that my setup will weigh in at 24kgs. But from what i read, both mounts "can" manage the weight.

[RobertI]

Nice purchase. Probably a stupid question, but it’s not orange! Has it been repainted or is it just an “orange tube” vintage? Are there any specific problems you have identified with the scope that require taking it apart? I’ll let others with more experience weigh in before I say anything more! 🙂

[Peter Drew]

I would try it before doing anything radical and if it gives good images I would leave well alone for the time being.     🙂

[Cosmic Geoff]

42 minutes ago, Chrb1985 said:

My concerns are of course the mirrors and the corrector plate and im considering cutting 3hiles in the rear for vents with filters 12v and one in front, mabye som more holes to lighten the weight? And i plan dissasemble the whole thing and grease the threads and clean the inter thing inside with kirros and maby add some dark "tape" since i herad this is a smart thing to do whilst ut is already open. Please weigh in here.

If I were you, I would resist the temptation to do any of this.  In the photos the mirrors and corrector plate look okay, so my recommendation is to leave well alone.   The suggestion of cutting holes in the tube makes me shudder.  Unless it is very old, it should not need any re-greasing.  I have a C8 which I bought used and which must be over ten years old by now and it works fine.  No dismantling, no extra holes, no servicing. 

[tooth_dr]

47 minutes ago, Chrb1985 said:

Whats smart, and whats not

Smart thing to do is leave it alone!  Resist any temption to modify or dismantle until you've given it a good tesing over a few weeks/months, and decide then if it's necessary to do anything.  I seem to remember a thread on a EQ6 that you 'modified' that didnt go particularly well?

[Chrb1985]

20 minutes ago, tooth_dr said:

Smart thing to do is leave it alone!  Resist any temption to modify or dismantle until you've given it a good tesing over a few weeks/months, and decide then if it's necessary to do anything.  I seem to remember a thread on a EQ6 that you 'modified' that didnt go particularly well?

Acctually it did. All of the advices i got was probably well ment. But more than a few guys said i connected negative to positive and i did tripple check that and the way i did it was right. But what humble must admit is that i tried to modify a usb to rs232to use as a EQMOD or EQDIR cable. And i did all the way i thought was right.. and i guess i got it wrong so i guess k learnt my lesson there. Because that resulted in burnt l2 i think it was.. but my modifications up to that point did work. I decided after this was  that the way to go (as a few guys here did suggest) was to just replace the motherboard with a eq6 one. So i did that and no more EQMOD cables, just a usb a to b and the 12v cable that came with was scew on plug. So i guess i should have taken the advice before burning my circuit board. 

I guess we live and learn. After this i have soldered quite a few power cables so that they are right length and inside a few other minor tweaks with the soldering iron. The last kit i got was a game changer, different size tips, blads, different soldering material and i took an advice to use the right color for cable shrinknig tube sleeve.

But enough in that. I will take your guys advices and dont do anything intill i try it. But i am going to paint it. But ill talk with professionals first and ask them if the can paint it without dissasemble it. As for now i dont have it in my hand but the guy i bought i from will deliver it tomorrow eavning. If i see that it is alot of dust inside i will remove the corrector plate and clean it. I did this on my c 11 and that was actually not as hard as they say. Meanwhile cleaning RGB filters nearly killed me. I bought some new astronomik filters i think they were lik 7-800€ with taxes and import fees. So when i got the. I was devastated too se the very sticky with some thing inside the sealed box. I had no choice but to clean them. A good amount of time and $ later i got the hang of it. I removed all i could from my barhrome than showered roof, walls and floor, then i got to it with the door closed,  dressed only in my shorts and gloves it turned out 100% perfect so Ill guess thats the trick Ill use with the corrector plate and possible the mirrors on the c14 if it comes to that. I will let you guys know how it looks tomorrow night.

Thanks a bunch for the advices and i will take them this time

Here is some pictures of the old C11 on ioptron hae43 and homemade pier from scratch.

 

 

[dweller25]

As others have said, leave it as it is and try it out.

You may want to wrap it in reflectix to avoid having to cool it down

[geoflewis]

I used to have an NEQ6 Pro and never put anything bigger than a 4" APO (TSAP100Q) on it. The C14 itself weighs over 20Kg, so by the time you've added CWs and anything else such as a camera, then I think you will be far in excess of (maybe more than double) the recommended max payload. As other have said, I also wouldn't advice taking the C14 apart to do anything before you use it to see how it performs as is. I'm not familiar with the iOptron Hae43, but from checks on-line it looks to have a similar payload capacity to the NEQ6 Pro, so you're definitely pushing it try the C14 with either of those mounts.

[Chrb1985]

23 hours ago, geoflewis said:

I used to have an NEQ6 Pro and never put anything bigger than a 4" APO (TSAP100Q) on it. The C14 itself weighs over 20Kg, so by the time you've added CWs and anything else such as a camera, then I think you will be far in excess of (maybe more than double) the recommended max payload. As other have said, I also wouldn't advice taking the C14 apart to do anything before you use it to see how it performs as is. I'm not familiar with the iOptron Hae43, but from checks on-line it looks to have a similar payload capacity to the NEQ6 Pro, so you're definitely pushing it try the C14 with either of those mounts.

Hi Geof! So i received it today. It looks really really good. I put it on the ioptron Hae 43. It works. But it was so cold that i could not do any testing. Sad because the weather was cracking!! Anyway i will need to buy a usb 3 hub with 1m cable to reposition the Eagle, i will also buy zwo helical focuser. The Baader Diamond tracker is 1.2kg if im not remenbering wrong. The ZWO helical focus was about 150g or so. Than im dow to just camera, filteewheel and ZWO focuser mountet straight on the primary focuser. Og yeah and the finderscope with 174mm is about 350g. Im thinking i can get it at around 23kgs i really hope that if i balance the scope perfect i will work. It not than i got 1 C11, 1 hae 43 and 1 Neq6pro for sale 🤣😂 

[geoflewis]

I look forward to seeing what you can do with it 🤞

[Chrb1985]

13 hours ago, geoflewis said:

I look forward to seeing what you can do with it 🤞

Heres a little update. Just roughly balanced the c14 on the Neq6pro with the all equipment ex the guide scope+cam, before mounting it back on the ioptron HAE43. Seems to work fine. It went all the ways at speed 8/9 on 9/9 it struggles/stops at the most critical points. So just normal use/guiding i cant see will be a problem for the HAE 43 🏆

I included some pictures and a short clip of the work beeing done.

[geoflewis]

Looks good. I have no experience of strain-wave mounts, but not having any CWs does significantly reduce the payload. I would have thought that the C14 was far too heavy for the NEQ6 Pro. Looking forward to seeing your results.

[Chrb1985]

24 minutes ago, geoflewis said:

Looks good. I have no experience of strain-wave mounts, but not having any CWs does significantly reduce the payload. I would have thought that the C14 was far too heavy for the NEQ6 Pro. Looking forward to seeing your results.

Thanks! And I will keep you posted. And i am going to order a zwo helical focuser. I reduces the whole weight with 1kg!! So thats desireble. My only concern is that the focusing knob for the main mirror was not exactly "smooth" i will need to try to zwo focus motor on there and see if it acctually works good enough before i switch to the helical focuser. 

[Chrb1985]

7 hours ago, geoflewis said:

Looks good. I have no experience of strain-wave mounts, but not having any CWs does significantly reduce the payload. I would have thought that the C14 was far too heavy for the NEQ6 Pro. Looking forward to seeing your results.

Hehe forgot to attach the pictures..

[Chrb1985]

On 16/01/2024 at 14:15, geoflewis said:

Looks good. I have no experience of strain-wave mounts, but not having any CWs does significantly reduce the payload. I would have thought that the C14 was far too heavy for the NEQ6 Pro. Looking forward to seeing your results.

Hi guys!

Here is some update pictures and info from the latest progress in the ioptron hae43, Celestron C14 project.

I have ordered a counter weight bar wich will arrive this week. I testet ut out with a threaded bar and one counter weight about 20-30cm on the from the Mount. This acctually worked like a charm. The motor can slew the Mount all directions at all speeds with no issue at all. I actually think the counter weight i used now was just 2.5 or 3kgs it is half the size of SW 5kgs. And the bar was VERY flexible, but no the less ut worked very nice. So cant wait to get the right bar in the mail. Too bad the season is nearly over.

I also decided to open the tube up and clean the inside, primary mirror, secondary mirror and the corrector plate. This was a real hassle. First of all i could almost not get the corrector alu ring of. It was stuck on so hard i nearly broke the glass removing it, i can belive thats the original ring so Ill replace that with a dewheater ring as soon as i can afford it. After i got the ring of i then discovered that the previous owner has not only opened the Telescope but he obviously removed the primary mirror to it was still marks on the mirror, glass and tube. He had also used some type of glue or silicon when resembling it. So the cardboard or cork or that ever the spacing rings are made of was really sticky and of of placing, this is not a huge issue but i dont thi k ut is advices to use silicon or glue in that operation. I would at least not use it. The Telescope was really really dirty and i first thought it had som serrious scratches on the primary mirror, this turned out to be streams from previous cleaning. I Found a good amount of dust and something i guess came from a plant or tree or something, i also found spiderweb inside 😆. What i really did not like was thet on the Secondary mirror it was drawn a black ring with marker or paint. I guess this was used in some kind of collimation process.. i did not have isopropanol and i did not know what to use to get it off so i just left it there. I can clean it of when installing the dewheater ring. I started 15.00 and was done 20.00. so it took some time. I am very pleased with the result.

Im sad i did not take more pictures bedre i cleaned it. I might also add that i used big  medical cotton/compress balls with regular water a first, just dabbed the surfaces, then i used a liquid i bought at teleskop-express.de wich i mixed a good splash of in about 0.5L water( i dont know what it is but it came highly recommended. Its a small white bottle with no lable) after these steps i cleaned it as good and dry as i could before taking out a new microfiber cloath. I then used this intill ig ot all strekaks and dust off. I also at some points used as it blower bulge in the prosess but i was really carefully with this as i have had bad results with those before.

Please give me som pointers on what i could have done different and tell me if you think it looks good or not.