I recently purchased a hypertune kit from the the states due to an issue I was having with tracking. Turns out the tracking issue was a guide scope flexure problem, not the mount. So I thought I'd attack it anyway. Beats reprocessing old data! I figured the mount could use all the help it could get as, I image at 1800fl with a quite slow scope (f9) so long exposures are the norm, I'm also oversampled at .8 arcsecs per pixel, these factors combined magnifies any tracking errors.
I have had the mount apart previously to adjust worms and adjust other bits and pieces. I really did not know how to get further into the mount without instructions. The hypertune dvd is pretty extensive, and the rebuid requires a lot of time, it took me approximately 8 hours to rebuild the mount.
The kit comes with an allen key set that is quite good quality a screwdriver with 4 slot in attachments, a brush for removing that black grease/glue that synta favours, 2 dvds, teflon spacers, emory paper, graeses (I used my own lithium grease) and a small knife. When the kit is purchased you are sent a link for a worksheet for calculating the teflon spacers widths. The tools that I needed to use as extras were a pipe wrench to remove the ra axis, a set of digital calipers, a hammer and a timber block/dowel and a set of circlip pliers, all were essential.
The dvd shows how to pull the mount down and does a modification that makes the altitude adjustment a lot easier, It involves drilling and tapping the mount and putting new bolt in the newly tapped holes, I really felt this was unnecessary for me as my mount is observatory mounted on a fixed pier and not used in the field.
Pulling my mount down I found some things that should make a real world difference. One of the plastics spacers was perished and brittle, and this mount is not 2 years old yet. There was also some rough casting in the main ra housing shown in picture (pic 1 and 2) with the arc of plastic spacer on the bearing. I found that the bearings' grease was very thick and restricted the movement of the bearings, I removed as much of the thick brownish clear grease as I could and replaced it with lithium grease, which made a large difference to how the bearings ran. The worms and ring gears was filled with the famous synta black glue, which is really quite easy to remove with the included brush, again I used lithium grease in the worms. On the ra howing the factory workers put masking tape over the threaded holes (in last pic) my worker evidently didn't like removing it so half was still on there and then been painted over, the included knife made short work of it. Putting the mount back together is not too difficult except for the ra axis putting it back together was a royal pain, it took about an hour and a lot of sanding of the housing to get the front bearing housed properly, the rest is quite simple.
I found there were a few thing that I did not agree with the dvd for going about things. Adjusting the worms was one thing, it was very blase about it, which I think is possibly the most important adjustment you can make on a mount. I have found that for me the best way to adjust the worm on a eq6 is to remove the electrics cover, remove the motor of the axis you wish to adjust, then you can stick you finger in an spin the spur gear with a finger and then do you adjustment and then you can check the meshing tightness with the spur gear and how it spins.
Overall its nice to know that my mount is performing at its best. I am yet to see results due to the eternal cloud over bathurst. So will see how it goes performance wise soon.......
yeah, as Scott said make up an article with pics. I would be good to see the innards of my eq6.
BTW is the web site you got this hypertune from deepspaceproducts.com?
Thanks,
Bartman
Bart, yes the kit is from deep space products. They offer a service to have a mount serviced in house and for a kit to diy. Unfortunetly I did not take any more photos during the rebuild.
One thing I forgot to mention is that the kit comes with teflon bearings/washer/shims to space everything out properly and you will have to make measurements with a caliper to choose which spacers to use, as it seems every mount is different. My Right ascension axis needed and declination axis were different and needed different thickness teflon spacers. I guess you could think of the hypertune as an engine blueprint.
Thanks for posting this. I am just getting ready to do the same thing with the Hypertune kit. I'm also looking at replacing the worm bearings with ceramic hybrid bearings from Deep Space Products and possibly replacing the main RA and DEC bearings also. I've managed to source Superlube (teflon based) locally and will be using this rather than lithium based grease.
I have a question regarding the main bearings - do you remember if these turned freely or if they were a bit stiff to turn. The black sealing ring of the new bearings I've sourced is a full contact seal meaning the seal rests on the inner bearing race and introduces a bit of friction in the bearing. I'm wondering if the original bearings also have full contact seals?
Another tip I've seen elsewhere is to use a piece of 1/4" hose on the end of the worm to rotate the worm while adjusting the mesh - this is a bit easier than trying to spin the spur gear in the motor housing.
Thanks for posting this. I am just getting ready to do the same thing with the Hypertune kit. I'm also looking at replacing the worm bearings with ceramic hybrid bearings from Deep Space Products and possibly replacing the main RA and DEC bearings also. I've managed to source Superlube (teflon based) locally and will be using this rather than lithium based grease.
I have a question regarding the main bearings - do you remember if these turned freely or if they were a bit stiff to turn. The black sealing ring of the new bearings I've sourced is a full contact seal meaning the seal rests on the inner bearing race and introduces a bit of friction in the bearing. I'm wondering if the original bearings also have full contact seals?
Another tip I've seen elsewhere is to use a piece of 1/4" hose on the end of the worm to rotate the worm while adjusting the mesh - this is a bit easier than trying to spin the spur gear in the motor housing.
Regards,
Peter
I did not replace the bearings. The main bearing were a little resticted as the grease which is a coppery clear colour is very thick, the black ring around the bearings is easily removed by a small screwdriver. I removed the black ring and got as much of the grease out and replaced it with lithium, they then were a lot freer running.
I did not bother with the small bearing attached to the worm wheels, they ran free and smooth. That theory with the hose on the end of the worm wheel.... well I dont think it will work, as when you remove the black plates that cover the end of the worm wheel also hold the end point adjustment for the worm, and that will make the adjustment almost impossible.
I do not think the bearings are full contact, the black plates kind of just sit in there, there are also 2 tapered bearings in there as well that have no retaining ring.
I think if you remove the black cap on the control panel side of the mount that end of the worm has a retaining ring so you can turn the worm without it's lateral position being affected. The black cover at the other end of the worm also acts as a retaining device for the worm so it needs to remain in place.
Did you use any degreaser of just wipe off the old grease?
I just went out and had a look at the worms again on the cp side, yep now I know what you mean with the hose thing.
I did not use degreaser, I just wiped out what was in there and packed them properly with the lithium.
When you get to putting the Ra shaft back together it is very difficult to get 1 of the bearings seated, I did a lot of sanding of its housing and had to use a lot of force to get it seated again (the bearing in the 1st pic). if you are only going to replace the worm bearings you will not need to take the ra axis shaft out.
When I did mine about a year ago, I did degrease the bearings as I read somewhere that mixing two different types of grease will not be good especially with lithium grease as it seems that they do "dry out" over a period of time
The worm bearings were changed to a sealed ceramic-type (these are actually same size ones used in roller skates!) with Abec7 classification - cost a bit more - bought mine from VXB in the US - did not change the tapered and main radial bearings as they seemed OK
Before the hypertune I could only get 30secs unguided subs but after it went as high as 300secs unguided if everything is well balanced "east-heavy" and not windy conditions - I was happy I did it!
Sold the unit since and will be working on a newer one soon but this time I will be changing the worm as well as the transfer/spur gears for the motor/worm with 64teeth ones made by AeroQuest (attached) - this will tell if it will make improvements or not since the new EQ6 Pro (white livery) is totally unusable if unguided
Do you know by any chance what the price is for the worm and ring gear kit from aeroquest? As the one thing that still really concerns me is when adjusting the meshing of the worm gear there seems to be a high spot especially in the dec worm where it seats a little harder in one part of the revolution.
Hi Brett,
Bummer no extra pics....
However;
The sevice to get them to do it means you/I would have to ship it to the US? is that right?
I have a NEQ6 (bought a few months ago), but I dont like the way my mount "feels" when I move it in either dec or ra. sometimes it squeeks moving dec when ra is in/on the east side ie counter weight shaft is pointing west ( does that make sense?)....hard to explain... tis like its not lubed properly...
So yep I spent a lot $$$ on a mount a few months old, but as you said, it might be the worker at the factory.
So would it be worth spending the extra 2-300 dollars for a refurb?
Pretty much all mass produced mounts could do with being opened up and tuned a little bit just to make sure all the gears mesh right, and that everything is lubed and running as smoothly as it should...
I don't know the exact specifics of what was done my HEQ5, but I do know it was tuned up a bit by its previous owner, and I can tell you the results I've been able to get from this mount are brilliant...
Great mini-write up Bret, Do you have a pic of your "Doomsayer" VC200L on the EQ6? Bet its an impressive looking setup!
Alex, I have been using one of Guys earlier prototypes, and My scope has been transformed into a truss but I have not picked it up yet. I am heading to Guys place hopefully this week to pick it up and install my new ascom interface to his automated roof.
Once that is done, pics will be posted asap.
I hope your heq5 isn't too good.... otherwise you maybe dissapointed with the incoming GM8!
BTW my vixen ed103 is on tonight doing focusmax v-curves....
Each S/S worm cost USD95 and the brass 64-teeth transfer gears/spur gear set (I did not show the pix of the spur gear - 3 gears in a set) cost USD145 plus abt USD40 for USPS priority mail
Jimm Egger is good to deal with and very professional - he produces the stuff only on order so you will have to wait aro 4 weeks - BTW he does not produce the brass ring gear for the EQ6, just the CNC machined s/s worm and transfer gear/spur gear sets
The rationale behind the gear sets with more teeth is that the resolution/turn would be smoother and note the gear with s/s bolt/nut, it goes thru a bearing that the transfer gear is set with rather than just the large hex nut - so no movement/wobbles from that gear that drives the spur gear that is attached to the worm
When I did my first hypertune, I knew nothing about astronomy (I still don't! ) but I did get a lot of info from the web and my source of guidance was from here: http://beevo.com/Components.htm (his website is not working well, undergoing revamp I think) and I was puzzled about how to mesh the worm to the worm gear and found documents on how to do it all (see attached) and it was not very difficult as long as you understand what is required and if a noob like me can do it, then all you guys will take this as a walk in the park!
Well I am going to do my next one on the newer model EQ6Pro soon
HTH
Cheers
Bill
Last edited by Visionoz; 04-01-2010 at 01:00 AM.
Reason: added a comment that was left out
Hi Brett,
Bummer no extra pics....
However;
The sevice to get them to do it means you/I would have to ship it to the US? is that right?
I have a NEQ6 (bought a few months ago), but I dont like the way my mount "feels" when I move it in either dec or ra. sometimes it squeeks moving dec when ra is in/on the east side ie counter weight shaft is pointing west ( does that make sense?)....hard to explain... tis like its not lubed properly...
So yep I spent a lot $$$ on a mount a few months old, but as you said, it might be the worker at the factory.
So would it be worth spending the extra 2-300 dollars for a refurb?
Thanks,
bartman
Bart
Looks to me like your "preload" is too heavy/tight - I had played around setting it right for my first unit and by reading and getting the gist from the doco (see my other post) understood what had to be done and got it right after a while by fiddling with the different tensions and I can tell you that it is best that the original grease be removed (washed mine with some solvent/degreaser) and regrease the whole lot of bearings!
Even my current EQ6Pro - what a shocker! - has very little grease and there are definitely QA problems with it because the grease on the two tapered bearings I had a quick look at was very uneven; ie there were some part that were dry without grease and lotsa on another section! Hence my decision to hypertune it now - I have heard it mentioned that if ain't broken don't fix it! - and I was hoping this new EQ6Pro was going to be better - but the luck of the draw soon put paid to that and I spent the dollars - to be honest, I wouldn't even bother with doing anything to it if it did give me satisfactory performance for astro-imaging but I have not had a decent shot yet since mid-winter last because I was trying to get a silk purse out of a sow's ear!!
Thanks Bill,
but just to be sure as to what you are saying;
I SOULD do a Hypertune and/or some other regrease?
Should I have a look and open my NEQ6?
Weight wise:
I'm either (at the moment) using sw80edpro or sw254newt.; not both at the same time until i get the PHD software to behave ( see my previous posts) on the NEQ6.
Should you do it is a question that only you can answer.. Will it improve the tracking accuracy of your mount, reduce backlash and even possibly reduce PE? If done correctly, definitely. Is it worth the money? yes.
If you have excessive backlash, guiding will ba a huge problem. If you are having the mount jumping around, especially binding and releasing, and to a lesser extent backlash, autoguiding will be turning itself inside out trying to get things to work, and it won't.
It would be great to have no PE but its not really a problem if you are autoguiding and the pe is smooth, ie no quick jumping around. What is a problem is quick jumps is the autoguider will not be fast enough to correct it, this can be a problem for some of the g11 owners who have trouble with the 76 second error as it jump too fast for the guider, even though the g11 has better PE, if it jumps quickly it will perform much poorer than the eq6.
The stuff of dreams (and sometimes nightmares...) 
) but I did get a lot of info from the web and my source of guidance was from here: 
Hence my decision to hypertune it now - I have heard it mentioned that if ain't broken don't fix it! - and I was hoping this new EQ6Pro was going to be better - but the luck of the draw soon put paid to that and I spent the dollars - to be honest, I wouldn't even bother with doing anything to it if it did give me satisfactory performance for astro-imaging but I have not had a decent shot yet since mid-winter last because I was trying to get a silk purse out of a sow's ear!!
