|
What are you aiming to do with it? I have the Orion badged version of the AZEQ6 (Old one, not a GT)
For visual it is a great thing, I always used it in Alt-Az mode and the encoders were really handy. I specifically bought it as I was sick of the slew time of my old Celestron CPC mount. Call me the unplanned and impatient astronomer, I would pick targets as they appealed to me and without any great planning of which order to see them so repeated slews across half the sky were common on any given night and the CPC was pretty slow. The encoders made it possible to just release the clutches and point manually, which I did often.
As an AP mount they seem to be able to perform as well as an EQ6, but they are harder to balance. The clutch design and axis bearing design is different and it results in the payload (And counterweights) putting pressure on the clutches so they tend to drag and make balancing harder. The Dec is easy to deal with when in EQ mode, you just rotate the RA to a "counterweights up" position to take the weight off the clutch disc and it frees up nicely. The RA is more of an issue. If I change the payload I crank the altitude down as low as it goes which takes almost all the weight off the clutch so it is easier to balance. I had heard of people having issues with the encoders when imaging and guiding, so I run it with them switched off in EQMOD. If it retires from imaging at some point I will turn them back on again.
The only issue I have had in the time I have had it (6 years) was the clutch discs compressed enough that the RA axis fouled on the body of the mount and it stopped tracking. The axis and clutch design means that if that happens the tighter you try to set the clutch, the harder it drags! I made up aluminium shims to add to the clutch height (As I figured new clutch discs would do the same eventually) and it has been perfect ever since, that was a couple of years ago. The message in that one is only set the clutches "tight enough" as the tighter you set them, the more you will compress the disc. The clutch is a compressed felt pad arrangement in between the aluminium housing and the brass worm gear assembly, the clutch action simply squeezes it all together. They work a lot like the clutch in a car where the EQ6 is a totally different design, better at the job IMO but they would either take more setup time in the factory or have a lot more variability on how they work, more in terms of end float of the axis bearings than anything else.
For the same purposes and payload I would be happy to buy another one.
|