where to send mount for tune up??

[hotspur]

Hello.

Is there anywhere in Australia I can send my EQ mount for a tune up??

Its only 8 months old,a Jap made one-I delibrately paid out more to get away from cheap chinese ones,to avoid issues.

But after many attempts at AGing,and not having much progress,and having to very good tec guys check over issues,and still getting poor guiding.I have to look at sending the darn thing away to be tuned up.problem looks like it may possibly be in dec.

So any suggestions of where to send it,who could do tune up etc.I am seriously looking at packing the lot into a box and storing away and forgeting about astronomy all together,and making the observatory into a storage shed.

Thanks Chris

[Ross G]

Hi Chris,

I know your frustrations.

I have a Vixen SXW Sphinx that has similar problems. It seems to all be in a HUGE amount of backlash in the DEC axis. I wouldn't know how to pull a mount apart so I took mine into Tasco/Skywatcher here in Sydney. After a number of visits the problem was still there....they "did all that they could do"...
I found that I can autoguide for 10 to 15 minutes by raising the DEC BACKLASH setting in the Star Book to 90-95%.

Does your controller have a similar setting.

Also, contact Atalas (Louie) on this forum. He has a Vixen GPDX mount which he has just adjusted to reduce the DEC backlash.

Good luck.

Ross.

[hotspur]

Thanks Ross for that valuable information.

Yes-the dec backlash is where the issue does appear to be.PHD takes along time to clear dec backlash.DT came up to help me,and while we could nver really pin pint anything-he was concerend with the amount of time it took to clear back lash in dec-takes 4 or 5 minutes doodling about.

I have set the back lash settings to 0 on both Ra and DEC,the Vixen Sky sensor 2000PC can adjust similar to yours.I will wait and see what clear seeing does regularly.I will have agp at cranking the BL seetings on DEC see what happens.I will try and make contact with Louie

Thanks Chris:thumbsup:

[Omaroo]

We have a member of our society currently replacing their Sphinx and upgrading to a G-11 for this very reason and one other.

She also tried freeing-up the sticky dec clutch a little via some internal adjustments so that the dec axis could achieve better balance than it was getting before. It's very difficult to balance a payload properly when the axes aren't perfectly free and fluid when released. I'm surprised at the lack of attention to quality from Vixen in this regard.

[hotspur]

Thanks Chris.

Yes-I am starting to hear a few very similar stories,re dec on vixens,far from impressed,thought vixen would be better.I'll see how things in better seeing.Do an adjust on the SS2K paddle re dec backlash as suggested by Ross.

If that fails,I'll contact retailer-as its only 8 months old-should still be under warrenty.I will not send anywhere to get fixed or looked at,Ross did have much joy.Also as its has not been opened up might give more more leverage with retailer.

Failing all that,and if there is no recourse,I'll open the thing my self and fiddle-I have done repairs on threadline fishing reels which have similar insides to eq mounts.but will only consider that if the retailer fobs me off.May as well fiddle after all that-as it appears this darn mount is basically worthless,and will eventually end up in the bin.

cheers Chris

[JohnH]

Humph, this matches my experiances with a Vixen Sphinx/Starbook however I believe the GPD SS2K was much better (by reputation anyway).

On my Sphinx Dec backlash could be adjusted to 2-3s but did not stay there - it would get back to 10s plus and render AP almost impossible. The only cure was to offset alignment to encourage some DEC drift and then correct in one direction only, this worked, sort of. I ended up upgrading to a G11G and am very happy I did.

The mount is a nice, clean, portable design and fine for visual use but for longish focal lengths (>1m) longish exposures (>120s) I think it will not be acceptable.

[g__day]

When I first bought my Vixen Atlux - about 4 years ago now had a way too loose DEC setting. I ended up doing the open heart surgery myself on the mount - took about 4 goes to nail it - becuase for me it was basically is the worm close enough to the main gear wheel and is the motor close enough to the gear wheel attaching to the worm - they were the only two variables to play with.

My worm gear was too far from the main DEC gear and the motor was way too far from the worm gear wheel. It wasn't actually hard to manipulate these to be al lot closer and get great results - nerve wracking the first time - but not technically really hard - if you do it in small steps.

The Atlux only needed an Allen key and a philips screw driver to adjust, with your EQ mount - I'm a babe in the woods - but I wonder if the wonderful folk at BinTel might help?

[Barrykgerdes]

I have 10 word documents detailinng the overhaul of an EQ6 down loaded from the internet and arranged into word documents from the original html.

It is very comprensive I can't attach them as each is over 1 MB in size.

Barry

[hotspur]

Thanks chaps for all your kindly helpful thoughts-Geoff Johnson has the sphinx too and has had those same issues,really this is unacceptable-and mathews' atlux-a very expensive mount have dec issues-Do not think I'll be buying Vixen again.

I'll give the retailer a ring this afternoon,but not expecting much feed back.But I think I have gone through many processes,and lots of help-even two ISS members who are very clever with high tec gear,are a bit stumped,after visiting to check it all out.Will keep trying,but it is appearing issues in DEC in vixen mounts is not at all uncommon.

Thanks 'Burandah1' for PM re sirus repairs,I'll follow that up.Apart from all that,I will just have to give astronomy a miss for a while.

cheers Chris

[Alchemy]

Sorry to hear that the mount is not as good as it should be, given all the efforts you put in to get the guiding up and running, it was looking more and more as though the mount was at fault, but when you spend a chunk of money on these things, it shouldn't be like that.

I had a mount prior to my G11 and that experience made me just go out and buy something with a proven track record, but still in the cost effective world.

Given the sudden influx of not happy vixen owners it's not looking good.

[hotspur]

Yes Clive.not good,still a few things I'll try-putting barlow in guider scope-making 400 focal length,that might pick up movement better.than 200 mm

Wait till good seeing conditions to test further.Might try turning dec off again.

Would not have thought Ag'ing would have been such a hassle.But after seeing previous vixen mount owners have had very similar issues,may not be all operator error.

[marki]

The SXW is no good for AP as it only has plain bearings and thus when you close the tolerances it binds up meaning the motors cannot move it. The SXD has roller bearings on both axes and it is possible to tighten everything up to get decent guiding ( I own both mounts). However the biggest problem lies in the erratic programing of the starbook. Even with clearence spot on I still got saw blade pattern on my guide graph. I swapped the motor board with a NexSXD board and this allows you to use a celestron controller in place of the starbook. Without any more changes to the gear tolerances my guide graph is now virtually flat with no motor noise what so ever (It used to make a funny humming clicking sound). The mount now thinks it is a CGEPro and behaves perfectly. This shows the mechanical components are very good, just the controller or programming is junk. I would imagine the skysensor 2000 would also be causing many of your woes.

Chris (Omaroo), it is easy to get the dec free, just backoff the lock nut on the dec axis a smidge and locktight in place so it does not undo.

Cheers

Mark

[Omaroo]

Yes, that's what we did Mark - no biggie. Just shouldn't have to. The owner bought the mount to do a job, and it wasn't doing it for her. It caused all sorts of unnecessary grief during her astrophoto learning phase. Her new G-11 arrives in the next week or two I believe.

[hotspur]

Thanks Mark-some really interesting reading there.

I have since had a few elite astro-photographer's from IIS contact me,after viewing the image-I felt was not up to scratch. (see here)

http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=81075

They feel its not all that bad,and quite passable-so will keep going with AP for a while-the seeing was not quite perfect when I took the images for this image,and the focus was a little off.It appears I may have been getting a bit too hung up on perfectly round stars,and not seeing major improvements in a shorter time frame.

The sub images are much better than a couple of weeks ago.

Interesting to hear your view points of SS2K mark-I pondered these MT-3 motors,and the wierd noise they make-I had a Vixen GP mount with DD1 controller and its matching pulse motors-beautiful-lovely set up (but no go to),I use to do 3 min exp,with very minimal trailing-even 3.3 mins.

When I bought the SS2K and MT 3 motors and put them on,the unguided images not as good.

When I did M45 5 nights ago,around 12.30 the seeing was better,the images had better stars (see link)

http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=80986

And the graph was hugging the line,and RMS value (which is more important than the graph -so I am told) was RMS .15 not .28 when I collected the data for 253

Anyhow-certainly a learning experience, and going by the feed back on viewers thoughts on these images-not so bad after all.

Thanks for help everyone-Chris

[Ross G]

Hi Mark,

The nexSXD exhange you talk about, was that on the SXW or the SXD?

Ross.

[marki]

You can get the board for both SXW or SXD but they are different due to the type of motor used in each mount. For me I only did the SXD.

Mark

[g__day]

My mount needed about 15 minutes of tuning, adjustment to really bring it to the top of its game. Pointing at best is around 35 arc seconds, tracking is superb (even carrying 3 scopes and imaging gear). The SS2K-PC controller needed a bigger, better manual - the idiots guide to optmising your mount for remote astro-photography would have been nice.

Getting this second hand - I was happy to learn this hard won knowledge, so Vixen present me with very high quality gear that should have been factory tuned better than it was! If you're prepared to address this - you can get good bang for buck on this gear.

My 2 cents worth,

Matt

[hotspur]

Wondering is there such a thing for the SS2K?

[marki]

As far as I know they only make the boards for the Sphinx SXW, SXD and the Atlux mount. The link is below.


http://www.telefonica.net/web2/amalthea/NexSXD/NexSXD_eng.htm

Cheers

Mark