EQ5 de-grease

[TidaLpHasE]

Hi all, i recently bought a cheap EQ5 to keep me in the imaging scene until i can work out a way of hiding the cost of a Losmandy from the boss

It was so tight to rotate on both the RA and DEC axis, i was wondering how on earth the batteries would turn the motors.

It seemed to track o.k. with the rough polar alignment i had each time, but i wasn't happy at all with the so-called lubrication and wanted to reco the mount with some new grease to ease the strain on the motors.

It was that bad, even with a 5 kilo counterweight the RA axis would only just move

Seriously is this grease 50 year old axle grease? it sure looks like it, more suited to a cannon turret on a tank than an astronomical device.
Anyways, i found this site http://www.astronomyboy.com/cg5/preparation.shtml
and was confident in doing the job myself.

All went well, apart from trying to remove the black stain from the grease off my hands terrible stuff, did i say how bad this grease is?

After about an hour, i had all the old stuff out and reloaded some new lithium grease out of a spraycan all over the parts in need of some relief from that black glue.

I put it all back together without much fuss, and made a few adjustments here and there to free up any tightness within the mount and worm gears.

The mount now rotates with ease in both axis, and the worm gears can be moved with very little pressure

All i need now is some clear sky to test the performance of my new and improved mount.

Cheers Trevor.

[Geoff45 (Geoff)]

Hi Trevor
I did much the same thing with my el cheapo Chinese mount, following the same set of instructions. It works much better now, but is still not a Losmandy (which I have on order). However I can take 30sec unguided track and stack photos with less than 10% rejects. The attachment shows omega centauri, taken with a 4" f12 reflector and about 25 stacked 30 sec exposures. Camera was a Canon 350D.
Geoff

[asimov (John)]

Yes, I had to do the same thing when I first got mine. Terrible stuff that 'glue' !!

[TidaLpHasE]

wow Geoff that's an awsome pic, very sharp indeed.

Too right John, terrible stuff, i am glad i got rid of it.

[Garyh]

Great shot Geoff, you get about the same for acurracy as me , about 30secs and now and then 1 min unguided. Oh I always thought that black stuff was tar .
Another thing that helped with the tracking was that I diamond lapped the gears. Got some fine diamond paste, a power drill and some flexible hose to go from the drill to the worm shaft and gave both axis a 20 min go on a slow speed. Really smoothed out the tracking!! Well worth doing...
Make sure you clean the gears up well after before you regrease...
Cs Gary

[xelasnave]

I have worked on my eq5 and found the greese to be a large part of the problem. I have got 175 sec thru an 80 x 400 unguided and near a hour widefield which is not too bad. I have heard that replacing the drive gears with a belt drive set up does wonders also
alex

[Geoff45 (Geoff)]

Originally Posted by Garyh

Another thing that helped with the tracking was that I diamond lapped the gears. Got some fine diamond paste, a power drill and some flexible hose to go from the drill to the worm shaft and gave both axis a 20 min go on a slow speed. Really smoothed out the tracking!! Cs Gary

Yeah I remember hearing about this somewhere else. I should give it a try.
Geoff

[astronut (John)]

Trevor, I recently overhauled my 30 year old refractors, the grease in both had hardened and was useless. Now with telescopes, they are going to be used in all extremes of climate. So I went to the experts and asked Don at Bintel what he used. He recommended Superlube, a high quality grease that won't bind your moving parts or melt in the heat.
It made every movement silky smooth. John