Why not ditch the GEM Eq design

[denodan]

Why do manufacturers still produce only GEM mounts? A wedge design would be far better, no weights to contend with. No merdin flip, surly it could be possible to design a wedge mounted system with high precision?

Just think it an Celestron SCT Had precision gears would be a match made in heaven. Surly it can be done.

[astro744]

A wedge combined with a fork is fine for SCTs or anything with a short tube. If you have a Newtonian or refractor you soon run into problems as the fork arms need to be much longer to allow the tube to swing between the fork. Being longer the form arms will then have to be thicker to make them sturdy.

[billdan]

The first Friction Feed Mount Lucas Mesu released in 2008, I thought was a good design, no counter weights, no meridian flip.

It could support a payload of Two 65Kg scopes, 4arcsec PE using ServoCat electronics and ArgoNavis Goto..

[xthestreams]

Amen, the Taurus or Planewave L-Series FTW!

[Peter Ward]

A high quality GEM allows quick and easy swapping out of multiple OTA's, as well as side-by-side configurations and system flexibility.

Forks are a one trick pony, you are pretty much stuck with the one main instrument on the mount....and unless well engineered can be very "springy"

[Slawomir]

My Mach 1 GTO equatorial mount, which could go for quite a while with counterweights up, used to take about 2-3 minutes for an automated meridian flip after finishing a usually 20-minute long sub, including re-centering on the target to within a few pixels (controlled by SGP). And all of that was happening while I was sleeping peacefully in bed. Fully automated meridian flip was great for dithering the data. I used to lose significantly more time on downloading subs (CCD) throughout the night and temperature compensation (automated refocusing). Counterweights were great to keep me in shape, as I had to set up for each session.

Having said that, the black beauty has gone to a new good home, and now I just use a simple alt-az, so daily chin-ups are a must, since my alt-az does not allow for counterweights.