How well behaved is your EQ6Pro mount?

bmitchell82 (Brendan) · #1 16-11-2011, 01:07 PM

So im trying to quantify my polishing of the white Stallion, back in the dark days where that gawd awful crunching and grinding sound of the EQ6 was perfectly normal. I had no idea what PE was and guiding was achieved by clicking Siderial tracking.

My question to owners out there of these Stallions unpolished or not is what is your current mount performance? how rowdy is it? PE measurements? Modifications?

I measured my mount last night and to my absolute delight it proforms extremely well and goes along way to explaining the round stars i quite frequently observe in my images.

So.

EQ6Pro - Purchased New
Age - Feb 2009 2 years old nearly 3 now
Modifications - Upsized Saddle
Work done - Complete strip down, greased up with Super lube PTFE, shimming for better mesh of the RA worm gear/wheel, adjustment of all worm meshings for minimal backlash in RA and virtually no backlash in DEC
Normal loading - About 23-25 kgs
Normal CW loading - 22kgs

PE measured at 1200mm FL (254 Newt AG) QHY9 @ 0.93 seconds of arc per pixel

Length of measurement: 4 worm cycles approximately 600 data points.
Ambient conditions Seeing 5-6/10 and a slight breeze.
PE +6.5 -5.3
Total PE 11.8 seconds of arc Pk to Pk
This is not jittery its a smooth transition.

Tonight I will take a screen dump of the graph to add in.

Hopefully this can be a good thread that isn't disjointed to help people gauge their mount and getting it working the way it should. We all know that the PE in these things is not that of a Ovision tuned G11, or a PME or a AP1200 GTO but at 1500 dollars and cheaper second hand they are a massive step into the field of AP for a modest price. So Naysayers need not open their mouth!

Zaps · #2 16-11-2011, 02:41 PM

What a bizarre post.

bmitchell82 (Brendan) · #3 16-11-2011, 02:50 PM

Why is it a bizzar post mate? This is an equipment discussions part of the forum is it not? why not discuss a mount that alot of us use?

Poita (Peter) · #4 16-11-2011, 02:54 PM

I am about to strip down an older EQ6PRO, so in the interests of shared information, I'll run a set of numbers before and after so we can see what difference it makes on this particular mount.

What method and software did you use to measure your mount? I'd like to use the same process so we can compare numbers in a useful fashion.

bmitchell82 (Brendan) · #5 16-11-2011, 02:57 PM

I grabbed the CCDWare PEMPro 60 day trial software.

EQMod was the interface with ASCOM 6 and MaximDL was the capture software. Mount aligned with Alignmaster pro to approximately 1 arc min accuracy (wasn't going to get to picky for a quick setup).

kinetic (Steve) · #6 16-11-2011, 02:58 PM

Relax mate,

your exuberance and passion for nutting out your gear is obviously
lost on some of us

I enjoy reading your progress and admire your openess to actually
share tips etc. Many hold this stuff back from others.

I wouldn't get too upset.
I would , however, like an explanation of why you put poultry on your
mount?...

Steve

Grahame (Grahame) · #7 16-11-2011, 03:02 PM

bmitchell82 (Brendan) · #8 16-11-2011, 03:10 PM

I don't need to hide what i do Steve, as i have lernt that even if you tell some people exactly what to do show them hands on what to do they will never match your level of experience or the quality of your work due to the fact that you where smart enough to figure it out and they wernt! Plus for those of us that are technical twinkle fingers sharing information can sometimes peak your thoughts and figure something that you never thought of. We all learn and grow our knowledge base!

Well steve

you see

when people say to me how the !!!! did you do that i just go I sacrificed a chicken, chickens don't run wild sooooo..... I have some Poultry strapped in just in case of emergency!

People miss understand me for getting angry Grahame knows me and i far from get angry at little bits like that. I do how ever get frustrated

but thats not for this site!

Poita (Peter) · #9 16-11-2011, 03:38 PM

I'm looking to upgrade the saddle from the standard vixen as well.

I never see the point in being a knowledge horde, if someone can do a better job than me by standing on the shoulders of what I've done, then good on them!

Zaps · #10 16-11-2011, 06:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bmitchell82

Why is it a bizzar post mate? This is an equipment discussions part of the forum is it not? why not discuss a mount that alot of us use?

Well now that you've edited out pretty much all of the bizarre stuff from your post, it's a lot less bizarre.

bmitchell82 (Brendan) · #11 16-11-2011, 06:35 PM

Zaps not many get my quirky sense of humor

so its all good my friend

ReaPerMan (Paul) · #12 16-11-2011, 08:46 PM

I bought my EQ6 from Grahame, second hand and it had I was assured, served him very well! As a newby I thought the Robocop like sounds that they made were an indication of the high tech nature of the beast

Brendan then asked my why I was putting up with that God awful noise and not doing anything about it? He then very generously offered to put it out of its misery and attacked it with a screwdriver! I have to say that it is now almost silent and it purrs rather than sounding like a football rattle.. Also all slop is now gone and it is sooo much better for it. I for one will try to obtain a set of figures so that I can see how it compairs to a 'normal' out of the box unit.

Paul

bert (Brett) · #13 16-11-2011, 09:05 PM

With mine the noise comes and goes. Especially the dec axis.

Can't complain about performance. I think they are a great mount for the bucks.

Brett

RobF (Rob) · #14 16-11-2011, 09:29 PM

I just wish you lived over here Brendan - I'd happily pay you strip my mount down. One day I'll work up the guts to try and tune it, but not now my camera is going again and I'm over-optimistically praying for some clear nights during dec hols

I think these sorts of threads are great for people looking to get max bang for buck from their Synta mount. Watching with interest.

ballaratdragons (Ken) · #15 16-11-2011, 11:37 PM

I have an old black EQ6 that I bought from Houghy about 5 years ago.

It is an absolutely fantastic mount!
Noise? Mine is practically silent when slewing.

I have never done any measurements of PE or accuracies but it has exact GoTo's every time.
Objects land in or near centre of the FOV and always have.
It Guides beautifully with Guidemaster guiding corrections always under .5 in RA and Dec!!!
(in Guidemaster anything under 1.0 is supposed to be excellent)

Houghy had the mount supercharged by Roger in Melbourne.
I'm not quite sure what one of Roger's supercharge's involves but I have heard that it involves far better bearings to start with.

It may be an old Black model, it may have the old decrepit v2.5a Hand Controller (non-flash upgradable), but in 5 years of Astrophotography and now 'Live' Astrocasts it has NEVER let me down.

I have no desire to replace it. It works nicely.

Here's the old girl: http://www.cloudynights.com/ubbthrea...s-close-up.jpg

bmitchell82 (Brendan) · #16 17-11-2011, 12:33 AM

I have found that 90% of the noise actually comes from the transfer gear between the gears on the motor itself!

here is my PE graph if anybody would like to look at it.

alistairsam · #17 17-11-2011, 01:10 AM

Hi Brendan,

nice work. that curve looks pretty smooth unlike the jittery ones I've seen. I know its mostly because of your tuning, but could it also be because of positive loading?
I keep reading about the noise of these mounts and references to coffee grinders and end user improvements, how come the manufacturers don't incorporate these improvements? Is it mass produced?
I don't have the mount but am always keen to read up on performance improvements.
without going into details, hypothetically, would class 5 bearings or if possible, 7, help? not sure if preloading is possible here.

bmitchell82 (Brendan) · #18 17-11-2011, 01:40 AM

The bearings in that mount are HUGE. There is a taper bearing there that centers it nicely. maybe you could get a little bit out of them but cost vs benifit they fail epically.

The only way you will improve the PE of these mounts is to improve the worm wheel and gear precision. Apart from making sure its as well adjusted as you possibly can get it what you see on that PE graph you wont get much more out of it.

Positive loading I doubt it as i balance with no bias as every time i have done it my guiding goes wayward big time. In saying that I the balancing technique i employ is due to the fact that my axis are not free flowing like that of a G11, but yeah and at the end of the day it would only follow the PE even better and make it worse so to speak.

Oh and some information on the graph, each one of the sections is a 1 minute block. so the PE isn't fast moving which allows the guider to keep up.

Does anybody know exactly how to employ the PEC to the eqmod, because every time i tried it followed PEC curve.... Inverted not inverted nothing mud skippa

rider · #19 17-11-2011, 08:32 AM

I upgraded from a fairly quiet eq5pro in early 2010. I was astounded at how silent the neq6pro is straight out of the box.
It points at what I ask it to, tracks properly and carries a modded 12 inch Newt with a lot of toys strapped to it, like its a made of feathers.
The only mods I've made are a long stainless counterweight bar, a set of lower spreaders for the legs, and the skyscan-tour handpiece.
Ive had 4 SW EQ mounts and they've all been good buys.

Terry B · #20 17-11-2011, 09:59 AM

I recently sold my EQ6pro and replaced it with a Tak NJP.
The tak is a bit more noisy but is much more solid. The EQ6 did have a fair bit of periodic error but I could always guide it out using guidemaster. I never bothered stripping it apart as it was good enough for what I used as is. All in all it was a good mount. The Tak is lots better but you would expect it to be for the cost.