RETROFIT II
COPYRIGHT NOTICE! This retrofit was done following the instructions of the yahoo roboscope group. You may start with this document: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RoboScope/files/Retrofit_v1.2.pdf
WARNING!: If you mod your mount you may void it´s warranty! also as power tools are involved, please always work with safety in mind.
The retrofit with the Flexible couplers works great for visual astronomy however, on my firsts attempts of autoguiding, I found that in some positions of the mount, the OTA a hum noise can be heard, I placed the palm of my hand over the tube and the sound stopped.
My conclusion, the whole combination of motors, steel flex couplers and mount entered in resonance with the motor movement and the resonance wsa being amplified by the OTA, that makes a nice resonance box.
Evaluating several options recommended at the roboscope group like rubber flex couplers: Part #S50PSSM0606 from http://sdp-si.com/eStore/ and making some math I decided to get the goto4all belt kit.
Stefan was very helpfull on the tracking of the shipment that had some delay and the Kit came on the week before Carnival, so I had four days to tune the mount once the kits were installed.
The kit came with all needed even the white gear that connect to the motor, so i was able to keep my original coupling in a box for future use.
The mount worked very nicely and I was not able to hear the hum noise again, on the first day of testing I was able to get this image of saturn, for more details on the image please got to http://fdiazhome.tzo.com/Astronomy/PoD/index.htm
In Memorial: Ephraim Kaufman
Freddy Díaz This page was last modified on 04-Mar-2006