Worm Gear Adjustment - Help!

[OzDave]

Hi,

I've got a Skywatcher EQ3-2 Synscan mount which I recently stripped down and re-greased due to tracking problems I was having. After the re-grease, the axes move a lot more freely given that they now actually have some grease.

However, I can't seem to get all the slack / freeplay out of the worm gears. I think the DEC gear might be alright, or at least not as bad as the RA. However, the RA has maybe a whole cog tooth's worth of freeplay if that makes sense (I'm talking about the cog that the RA motor drives). When I try to remove it by tightening things up ever so slightly, the drive axis becomes stiff to turn and feels like it binds a bit periodically. Given that there are 5 possible screws to adjust to get this right, I'm not really sure how best to go about this.

Can someone that has done a few successful worm adjustments comment on how best to get optimal adjustment starting from scratch (i.e. worm gear block detached completely). Which screws should be adjusted first? There must be a recommended order in which to tighten the bolts/grub screw, or at least I hope there is.

Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

David

[gary1968]

Deep Sky Eye Observatory

Check out that link. I know it is for the CG5 but it might be that the worm gear assembly is the same.

HTH

Gary