Ron,

According to at least one manufacturer of Delron (plastic) gears, there is no
known glue that will bond to the stuff. But what I did when I had my gears
separate was two things: First, I applied some RED locktite between the
gears .... sparingly, as you don't want any to get into the teeth and
interfere at all with the gear mesh... and then I pressed the two gears back
together. There were some ridges that the plastic gear actually rides on to
make it bond to the metal gaar. The shaft is just ridged as if it was a very
small set of gear teeth, and the plastic just squeezed and forced over the
'ridges'.

I have no idea if the loktite ever really did any good or not, but it's still
working after maybe two years now.

For what it's worth.

P.S. Contact me directly when you get around to aligning the encoder. I may
be able to help a little on that point.

Bruce Johnston


Bruce Johnston Computing
<http://members.aol.com/bjohns7764>
Internet home for "SuperFix" and "MegaFix" image processing software.
Personal page: <http://members.aol.com/ccdastro>


In a message dated 6/20/01 12:50:53 AM Eastern Daylight Time,

<< Bruce:

I did take the gear box apart finally and found that the metal gear has
indeed separated from the plastic gear. You would not notice this unless you
took it apart. I wonder how many people have paid a ton of money for
shipping to send their scope back to Meade for "service" only to have a half
cents worth of glue applied to the gears to "fix" this incredibly cheaply
constructed gizmo.

I called Meade and asked for technical assistance and a guy there told me
that Meade no longer will ship replacement gears or other dec parts. He
recommended that I not try to fix anything myself and suggested that for a
mere 200 bucks, I could send it to Meade to glue up the gears again. I asked
him for advice on what Meade uses to glue the gears together and he kinda
hedged around and finally suggested some kind of plastic glue would
"probably work". My question is; what kind of glue has been successfully
used to repair these gears? I know that the encoder alignment will be the
next hurdle, but I gotta get the gear fixed first.
>>

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