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Celestron CGEM

athlon

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athlon

athlon

Posted
Posted

Howdy

Am looking at this mount, and cant seem to find many practical reviews on it, so i thought i would chime in here, and see if anyone has one, and how it was etc, and more importantly, how does it fare next to the EQ6? is it the Emperor in new clothes? or a completely different animal?

ta!

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NickH

NickH

Posted
Posted

Erm

Astronomy Now...this month

:-)

It's a very nice mount.. once the firmware is up to latest rev... like an EQ6 with a bit more polish...and some interesting enhancements

I had it for 8 weeks...were I buying a new mount today, sub AP1200.. it would be the one I would get

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NickH

NickH

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the load capacity is pretty much the same (according also to Celestron R&D/engineers)

what I really liked was the slew/gears (seemed nicer), the handbox (no major issues in extreme cold), the firmware (some nice UI touches and options) and the styling... polar alignment is just wonderful too...software offset control...very neat touch

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johninderby

johninderby

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Posted

The impression that I got from various forums was that the CGEM seemed to handle the max rated load without problems. That's what I meant by "real world capacity" as some mounts seem to struggle a bit when loaded up to their max rated capacity. I would like to see a head to head test between an EQ6 and a CGEM to see just what happens when both are at their max rated load.

John

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NickH

NickH

Posted
Posted

I put my C11 and a guide scope on both...both work fine. Bern at Modern Astronomy has a C14 on his EQ6 (visual only I guess)

found the C11 on the CGEM at slow slew speeds was almost silent...no sign of any strain

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tmarkuk

tmarkuk

Posted
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I'm hoping there will be some CGEMs on show at Astrofest, the wife has agreed to an upgrade from my overloaded Vixen Sphinx SXW and I think the CGEM will make for a good choice.

The decision for me rests largely on it's comparison to the EQ6 pro as that is the other obvious option. I'll be picking brains this weekend hoping to make a well informed decision.

Thanks for the review Nick, it was both informative and timely!

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johninderby

johninderby

Posted
Posted

As I'm also interested in the CGEM mount, I wondered if Astro Motion Technologies was considering applyng their WS2 process to the CGEM mount. Here's the reply I got back from Tom Hadoulias, the owner of AstroMotion Technologies.

John

********************************************

Quote"

Hi John

Thanks for your interest in the WS2 process. Although we have not done a CGEM mount to date, we are totally familiar with the Celestron mount series including the limited availability of some of the larger format mounts. The CGEM is in the same class as the Atlas series of Synta produced mounts and would be the same price for the rework of your mount, $425.00. We also require shipping and return shipping costs in addition. We would also need the entire mount less the tripod, that would include the hand controller, and cable and power cable.

The CGEM is a very nice mount indeed. As all of the mass produced mounts however, they still suffer from the fabrication numbers and assembly line construction that is very prevalent in overseas manufacture. It is just the nature of the process to reduce costs by increasing tolerances and compromising some materials.

Ironically the materials are all pretty much the same as any of the high end mounts, just the labor time to machine and adjust is lacking. This is what we accomplish with the WS2 process, we tighten the tolerances and reduce the friction. Both have literally the same effect as if you built them in originally. I don't like to make any statements that are arbitrary, when you spend a lot of money for a name brand mount you expect to get a great performing mount, usually that's exactly what you get for your premium dollars.

Most of us don't have the luxury of spending thousands of dollars on an Astro Physics mount guaranteed to have machined tolerances on the worm gears of 4 arc seconds of periodic error. You pay for that guarantee and every mount that comes out of Roland's facility is going to meet that expectation. Now here is the interesting part. We can't guarantee 4 arc seconds of PE on a CGEM or an Atlas but for the price of a good eyepiece, we can usually get you a 50% improvement over what you currently have. If you happen to have a well made mount and everything was done correctly by sheer coincidence at the factory, you're going to probably end up with something pretty special.

Every mount will improve, the worst ones will realize the greatest improvement but the good ones are going to get better incrementally as well. We have recently completed an Atlas with bearing modifications, WS2 mods and re-adjustment and actually achieved several runs showing 3 arc seconds of PE error. Some runs showed 5 arc seconds and we are looking for an unbiased evaluation to confirm our results before we publish them but suffice to say that a off the shelf Orion, Atlas mount is right up there in performance with some pretty high dollar products. This is exactly what we are trying to accomplish and so far, most of our customers agree, we have definitely improved the performance of their mounts and allowed them to put their dollars towards scopes, imaging and other accessories without degrading tracking performance on a mount platform.

Regards,

Tom

Tom Hadoulias

Astro Motion Technologies, Inc.

http://www.astro-motion.com/index.html

"Unquote

Blurb form the AST website.

This is the next generation of mount rebuiding and re-work that will take generic mounts like the Vixen, CG-5, SVP, LXD's or others to a level of operating precision not possible with just cleaning, regreasing, replacing washers and adjusting backlash and freeplay. In order to achieve precision motion there has to be a method in which "precision" can be built into a mount that was "mass" produced and has variances from it's original design specifications due to high volume production processes.

We have a solution and developed a process similar to what is used in the aerospace industry; plating with high tensile, low friction coatings. This process removes a small amount of metal from friction bearing surfaces, then a ultra low friction lubricant is actually "bonded" to the contact surfaces to a measured thickness producing very tight tolerances. The lubricant is highly lubricious and permanent once applied. The result? Extremely durable, precise motion that is unaffected by temperature extremes, does not attract dust, dirt or foriegn particles in the drive mechanisms as petroleum products can, is non-corrosive, inert and has the lowest co-efficient of friction (0.03 @ 300,000psi) that is currently known in todays lubrication technology. Silicones, petroleum greases, Teflon (reg trademark), cannot duplicate the material properties of this method.

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