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Sorry but I've also hyper tuned my own cgem and there is a world of difference. Before the ra axis would literally stick at certain positions and was generally difficult to rotate. After I started taking it apart it was quite evident where the two problems were. One was one of the bearings was extremely difficult to turn by hand while all the others turned freely. This was due to too much grease packed in the bearing. The other problem was the actual "brass" gear housing rubbing against the housing at certain locations and sanding that slightly fixed that. The axis now can spin several rotations freely with the clutch disengaged when pushed by hand once. It would be obvious to anyone who saw before and after behavior that a "hyper tune" made a near unusable mount to one better then most new ones.

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There is an adjustment on the Dec & RA shafts to place
the gears closer together (on an EQ6 mount & probably all mounts)
It is very important to have it right otherwise backlash
problems will stop auto-guiding from working.
That was my case until I had it fixed.
That is a hypertune in my book but you could also put
in good quality bearings & grease.

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Al,

What you described is called worm gear mesh adjustment and I don't think this can be called hypertuning. All owners of GEMs should be able to perform this simple mechanical operation because it has to be done periodically and may require several iterations to get it just right.

Alex

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Point taken.

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What it means is that someone has opened up the mount and messed with it. That can occasionally be a good thing, usually something that has no practical effect of anykind, or, unfortunately, sometimes a disaster.

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Messing with some of these mounts can be a good thing. I think Uncle Rod's advice in the vein of, "let sleeping dogs lie" when it comes to mounts (or SCT or anything else) is generally good advice so long as you are getting acceptable performance out of the mount (or SCT or whatever else).

My own Atlas was bought used and was of older vintage. Last winter it became stiff in the dec axis and I steeled myself and opened it up. It of course had the melted yak glue in place of grease and there were paint chips and metal shavings mixed in with the grease. I assumed that some of this detritus got there during assembly but some might have been generated as parts that were not machined to specs ground against each other. So I polished the parts, replaced the grease, replaced the worm bearings and tuned the mesh.

Messing with my mount paid of wonderfully. It is easier to balance and my PHD graphs are superb. Maybe this spring when the Great Washington Nebula has evaporated I will post a screenshot.

Besides the state of the mount another thing to consider is your own mechanical aptitude and patience. It is easy to foul up things if you don't go slow. As in thermodynamics, quick actions may be irreversible

Ajay

Edited by bluedandelion (03/01/11 01:01 AM)

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