andrea tasselli:
Oskari Nikkinen:
I had an EQM35 a few years back, and was using it with an OOUK VX8, weight around 7kg.
Unfortunately i have nothing good to say about the mount, its just not well designed. I dismantled the mount to see if there is anything to improve or if the bearings need replacement. To my shockband surprise i found that the mount does not have any bearings at all but instead the axis are supported by plastic washers, hopes, and dreams.
The low weight of the mount is also a bit misleading when compared to the EQ5, because the EQ5 comes with heavier counterweights. All the weight savings are on the internals themselves, which is the worst part of the mount to save weight on.
Im not saying it cant be used, but i am recommending that you look elsewhere for your affordable mount. The EQ5 is not much more expensive and actually does have bearings so its not a complete fantasy to imagine it guiding reasonably well at a low focal length.
The absence of roller or ball bearings isn't proof of low performance i.e., the use of plain bearings isn't per se conductive of poor tracking performance as any user of the Vixen GP-DX or even the GP can testify.
But we aren't talking about Vixen mounts here, we are talking about the EQM 35 specifically. And i should say that even more specifically we are talking about my unit which was atrocious. I would be surprised if the very cheap Skywatcher mount was built with the same tolerances and care as the generally accepted to be higher quality Vixen mounts.
The fact that the mount had poor performance is, i think, sufficient evidence of poor performance. And poor it was, DEC guiding just didn't work no matter the tweaks and adjustments, and ultimately i turned DEC guiding off and resorted to imaging very high declination targets only, with short exposures (30s), to try and make drift less of an issue. RA guiding was ok at best, which can be attributed to the larger diameter RA gear than in the EQ3.
Oskari Nikkinen:
I had an EQM35 a few years back, and was using it with an OOUK VX8, weight around 7kg.
Unfortunately i have nothing good to say about the mount, its just not well designed. I dismantled the mount to see if there is anything to improve or if the bearings need replacement. To my shockband surprise i found that the mount does not have any bearings at all but instead the axis are supported by plastic washers, hopes, and dreams.
The low weight of the mount is also a bit misleading when compared to the EQ5, because the EQ5 comes with heavier counterweights. All the weight savings are on the internals themselves, which is the worst part of the mount to save weight on.
Im not saying it cant be used, but i am recommending that you look elsewhere for your affordable mount. The EQ5 is not much more expensive and actually does have bearings so its not a complete fantasy to imagine it guiding reasonably well at a low focal length.
The EQ5 head itself weighs 7.8kg, almost as heavy as my home HEQ5. The EQM-35 head is less than half that. Lot of meat for the backpack. I've seen several accounts on replacing the stock washers with teflon shims, belt modding the drive, etc: if it's a smaller investment and not more than 2 afternoons work I'd consider giving this mount a chance... If anything larger, it will be the AL55i.
You are right on the weight thing, but i dont think stability of the mount is a good reason to save a few kilograms. You are of course free to try and make it work, but i would not recommend this mount to practically anyone for any use.
I think i have said everything i want to say about the mount, if someone has good experiences with theirs, great. I did not with mine.
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. Oskari Nikkinen was almost certainly referring to the EQ5 pro (no idea if it's branded differently in the US), which is indeed substantially cheaper.
