Last night I decided to have a look at my DEC gearing to see why the scope
kept "jumping" whilst locked on to a target.
It also made a knocking sound whilst this was happening.
Much to my amazement when I removed the big gear there were whole sections
of it completely devoid of grease and it is obvious the these sections had
never been in contact with the grease covered worm.
I'll have to delve into the archives to find the adjustment technique.

William




At 04:54 17/11/2003, Clifford PETERSON wrote:
>I came into this thread late and haven't read most of the other posts so
>this may already have been covered.
>
>I discovered that when you replace or make adjustments to the worm
>drive those adjustments can be a little tricky. I don't know if all
>scopes are like mine but the gear that the worm runs against didn't seem
>to be perfectly centered. Depending where I was located on this big gear
>when I made my adjustments to the worm, I could end up with locations
>that seemed to get tighter and the motor would slow down and it other
>quadrants it was just fine.
>
>After adjusting the worm I would have to run the scope, using the hand
>key pad, all around the surface of the big gear and look for tight spots
>by listening to the sound of the motor. By noting the tightest spots I
>could position the big gear and worm at that location and do the
>adjustments for how the worm is positioned and then things seemed great
>again.
>
>You may have one of these tight spots that is causing your problem
>because it has been adjusted in a location where the clearance between
>the worm and big gear was greater.
>
>Just a thought.
>
>Cliff
>
>Mark and Doc:
>
>Thanks for your comments. Essentially, my LX200 still slews and
>visually
>tracks very well, except occasionally the motor will either slow to a
>very slow
>speed or stop completely (freeze up). This may happen more often near
>the
>zenith with the DEC motor, I believe. Sometimes I can manually "push"
>it and get
>it going again, other times I turn off the scope and relevel it. I've
>been
>using a Starlight X-press MX7C camera with STAR2000 autoguiding. When
>in
>progress, the autoguider seems to be working, but even on 2-5 min.
>exposures
>produces either star trails, streaks, or double images. Without
>autoguiding, I can
>get decent tracking for about 1 minute tops. I did a repair several
>years ago
>on the motor when I had a "runaway DEC." Any other ideas? Thanks.
>
>Herb

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