Sponsored By:

Subject: Re: LX-200 Drive Problems
From: Brandon Jones
Reply To: mapug@shore.net
Date: Wed Nov 29 02:02:15 1995

>Brandon, there is NO grease inside the gearbox. There is a clear
>piece of
>plastic material (very thin) between the gears and the encoder wheel
>presumably to keep trash from clogging up the encoder). There is a
pair
>of IR emitting diodes mounted on one side of the gear box and a
matching set
>of IR detectors mounted on the other. They are aligned so as to
shine
>through the encoder disk. If you filled the gearbox with grease,
>you would blind the encoder.

>Tybee
Yes understood I am just amazed that the encoder was not put outside
the gearbox in a separate enclosure on an extension of the gear
shaft.To me this means that there will never be a way of quieting
these gearboxes unless the design is changed totally.I showed my old
10 inch to a potential sales customer last night and when demoing
the fast slew it always makes you cringe when the RA gearbox
sounds as if it is going to strip any minute.You then have to
explain that it has always done that and it is quite normal.
I will never make a good sales rep as I pointed out all the
bad points.
Brandon S. Jones