Hi,
I'm looking at options to upgrade my mount. Requirements are go-to and capacity around 18-20kg. No real interest in photography.
Current front-runner is a Saxon NEQ6 for $1700. A couple of questions:
1 - Is there anything else that compares in this price range?
2 - Are there any significant issues with the NEQ6 (visual only)?
EQ6 is a proven performer and will carry 20kgs for visual without problems.
The alternative is the old Celestron CGEM mount.
As you probably know, the EQ6 is being replaced by AZEQ6 and CGM by CGX.
Hope that helps!
Bo
Hi again,
Does the gear ratio make a difference, for example if I wish to do some imaging in a few years' time?
NEQ6 ratio = 705
EQ6R ratio = 720
I'm not sure what these figures imply or how they impact performance/compatability with other gear...
That isn’t a significant difference. Gear ratios are to some extent constrained by the available machine tools to cut the teeth vs the ratios afforded by gears or toothed belt drives, and the steps/rev of the motor.
Well, I've put down a deposit on the Saxon NEQ6. At $1700 it seems to have the best bang-for-buck, and with a likely price rise around the corner it seems a good time to plonk some money down.
Cheers
Stephen the factor that most strongly influences the stiffness of an EQ mount (and payload) is the diameter of the worm wheels - not the number of teeth. But its not the only deciding factor.
When I started in astro the rule of thumb was that to be any good for AP, the worm wheel had to be as large as the aperture of the scope, and you will still see that with observatory scopes as well as the ring-gear inside the base of Celestron and Meade fork mounts.
The cost of big mounts is what really pushed the move to fast truss newtonians back in the 1990s - a shorter lighter OTA meant you could get by with a much lighter flimsy mount, and with auto-guiding becoming cheap enough for amateurs, even smaller mounts, which brings us to the present situation where rather puny mounts with 60-80mm worm wheels can carry 11" scopes.
Other factors include:
- the way the worm driving the worm wheel is mounted, this is a point of weakness;
- the way the worm engages the worm wheel - a fixed arrangement (Skywatcher, Losmandy) allows backlash, whereas the iOptron arrangement in their iEQ45 and CEM60 (magnetic loading) has no backlash but has a risk of damaging the teeth on the worm wheel;
- the stiffness (or lack of it) in the tripod, and
- availability (or lack of it) of local support if anything goes wrong.
Thinking about the power supply for the NEQ6 Pro...at my archery club we have a portable timing system that runs at 12VDC, and we use this as a power supply:
