Help! All of a sudden my brand new Sky-Watcher EQM-35 mount doesn't turn

What do you mean by engaged?

What do you mean by engaged?

Clutches must be closed so that you can hardly move it manually

This was happening to my AVX mount, the clutches were not engaged (in my case, they are two small black handles; one close to the DEC motor and one close to the RA motor).
It was making a rough whirring sound, but not doing anything, it moved a little sometimes on one axis because one clutch was engaged more than the other. I was about to sell the mount, because I thought it was defective.

Problem solved! Turns out that my power supply is broken. Why did I not think about that?☠️

Thx for all the replies though.

I have great experience as an EQM-35 fighter.  First, let me say that I could not live without the ASIAir that I use to run it for astrophotography – it is ike one stop shopping for all you need instead of browsing for compatible components in specialty boutiques (e.g polar alignment, telescope control, camera control, data storage, scripted imaging runs, and guiding).  That said, ASIAir has a guding error readout (based on internal phd2 algorithms) and it showed me that I could get a total error of around 3-4 arc sec with the mount out of the box (and that was with very picky polar alignment).  Then when really cold winter nights (like -10 C) came into play, tracking became really problematic and guiding error worsened considerably.  Long story short, the EQM-35 has plain surface bearings (no rollers of any kind, just cylindrical inner and outer sleeves that spin one within the other with surface contact).  Greasing such a bearing system is of paramount importance for proper performance – assuming a properly adjusted compression force pressing the cylinders into one another, grease allows for the necessary sliding freedom. The type and amount of grease really matter.  A little online research revealed that many EQM-35 owners had mounts that were improperly greased – too little, too much or grease that had become like glue.  The fix is to disassemble everything and re-grease the bearings.  There are videos by users that show how to do this, but it is not a task to be undertaken lightly.  Then there is also the issue of correct pressure between the gears in the drive system that has to be considered in seeking anything close to sub-arcsec guiding.  Right now, I'm getting about 1.5 to 2 arc sec total error in guiding, which is serviceable when using the wide field corrector that comes with the scope for astrophotography.  There are a number of upgrade drive kits out there that you can install to get better tracking for improved astrophotographic quality.  I say all of the foregoing just to give you a heads-up if the issues start occurring.

Clear Skies,


Steve

SickL has some fantastic numbers. After a few teardowns, re-grease, tweaks and adjustments, I have mine consistently below 1.2 arc seconds and it can run as low as 0.7-0.9 when conditions are perfect. As a contrast, my EQ6-R Pro will run between 0.4 and 0.6 all night long right next to it. I haven't done anything to the EQ6R. It's counter intuitive but running a little unbalanced (camera heavy and east heavy) can actually improve the guiding some and using both counterweights any time you can also helps.

I just got sky watcher 35 Eq today set it up and trying to use it. I finally the motors to work after an hour and started to sleep with it some. Figuring out how to it easier said than but got some information put in the syn scan except still having problems with entering the longitude on without changing after I put it in but still even without polar alignment I can still tell it keeps up better with the planets than does the Celestron cg 4 does. Although I did order the onstep motors and tracking to see if they will improve Celestron keeping up with the sky.