Telescope Reviews: LXD 75 Mount Support from Meade

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Equipment Discussions >> Mounts

Pages: 1

vanwebster
newbie

Reged: 11/21/11

LXD 75 Mount Support from Meade
#5442167 - 09/26/12 06:30 PM

Meade has run out of RA drive assemblies and will not be supporting the LXD 75 mount from this time on. For LXD 75 owners, this means that if your motor or drive circuit card dies, your only resource is the secondary (used) parts markets. Their failure to continue to support the LXD 75 by Meade is the death knell of this product. Take care of the one you have.

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jgraham
Postmaster

Reged: 12/02/04

Loc: Dayton, Ohio

Re: LXD 75 Mount Support from Meade new

[Re: vanwebster]
#5442429 - 09/26/12 09:10 PM

That's too bad. My LXD75s are getting a lot of miles on them. When they finally die I'll be ready to upgrade. "See honey, now I gotta have a new mount! This one's broke and they don't fix'm no more."

Shhhhhh, nobody tell her that you can buy a mount without a telescope attached...

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TALK2KEV
sage

Reged: 03/08/06

Loc: Oklahoma

Re: LXD 75 Mount Support from Meade new

[Re: jgraham]
#5443379 - 09/27/12 11:58 AM

Can you buy a new motor from electronics dealer? does anyone know what motor is on the Lx75? I know it's attached to the motor controller board which would have to be removed from the board and re-attached. If the specs was known about the motor maybe a replacement could be found?

http://www.alibaba.com/showroom/12-volt-electric-motors.html

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EFT
Vendor - Deep Space Products

Reged: 05/07/07

Loc: Phoenix, AZ

Re: LXD 75 Mount Support from Meade new

[Re: TALK2KEV]
#5443398 - 09/27/12 12:09 PM

The problem is not the motor as those rarely go bad. The problem is the motor board. The only way to get the motor board has been to by the entire motor assembly from Meade but now those will apparently no longer be available.

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jgraham
Postmaster

Reged: 12/02/04

Loc: Dayton, Ohio

Re: LXD 75 Mount Support from Meade new

[Re: EFT]
#5443578 - 09/27/12 02:07 PM

Sometimes you can find vendors on eBay that are parting out scopes. I recall one vendor that seemed to specialize in parting out ETX's.

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Starhawk
Post Laureate

Reged: 09/16/08

Loc: Tucson, Arizona

Re: LXD 75 Mount Support from Meade new

[Re: jgraham]
#5444405 - 09/27/12 10:47 PM

Way to go, Meade!

-Rich

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Peter D.
member

Reged: 02/09/12

Loc: Central New York

Re: LXD 75 Mount Support from Meade new

[Re: Starhawk]
#5445466 - 09/28/12 04:13 PM

You could fix the board as long as components are available.

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rmollise
Postmaster

Reged: 07/06/07

Re: LXD 75 Mount Support from Meade new

[Re: Peter D.]
#5445641 - 09/28/12 06:30 PM

Quote:

You could fix the board as long as components are available.

Yep. But you have to know how to troubleshoot and repair electronics and solder on PCBs, which not everybody knows and which not everybody wants to know. And if there is a PROM that's bad you are sunk without being able to get one from the Meadesters.

Best bet? Be careful with the power to your mount. Use a battery.

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Geo.
Carpal Tunnel

Reged: 10/01/08

Loc: Upstate NY

Re: LXD 75 Mount Support from Meade new

[Re: rmollise]
#5447767 - 09/30/12 12:11 AM Attachment (9 downloads)

Quote:

Yep. But you have to know how to troubleshoot and repair electronics and solder on PCBs, which not everybody knows and which not everybody wants to know. And if there is a PROM that's bad you are sunk without being able to get one from the Meadesters.

Generally, the driver MOSFETs go south. They can be replaced if you can rework SMD and they haven't burnt up too much territory when they fry. But as Rod points out if the fault is in the PICMicro microprocessor there's no fix without Meade's proprietary code.

I have a couple here and the Dec drive is bad, I'm going to see if a DS2000 mainboard will drive them. Lots of busted DS2000s around to donate organs. The major hurdle is the LXD's high frequency encoder output. The DS2Ks single processor might not be up to the task. It does work with the LX200 drives, which have an even higher frequency. Quiet slew will also reduce the frequency somewhat. We'll see.

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rmollise
Postmaster

Reged: 07/06/07

Re: LXD 75 Mount Support from Meade new

[Re: Geo.]
#5448066 - 09/30/12 08:45 AM

Sounds like a cool project, George.

For most of us? The 75 wasn't that expensive to begin with, and if you've gotten some years out of it, it's served well. If one cannot be repaired, there's always the very similar CG5.

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avarakin
Carpal Tunnel

Reged: 07/13/09

Loc: Parsippany NJ, USA

Re: LXD 75 Mount Support from Meade new