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Posts Tagged 'montierung'
WAVE-Mounts from Skywatcher with Strain Wave Gear
August 21 2024, Stefan Taube
The new WAVE mounts from Skywatcher incorporate industry standard strainwave gears. This gear design impresses with its excellent load capacity to weight ratio, its compact design and its favorable price.
Skywatcher offers two models:
- WAVE-100i Strainwave GoTo Wi-Fi with 10 kilograms load capacity
- WAVE-150i Strainwave GoTo Wi-Fi with a load capacity of 15 kilograms
Mounts with strain wave gears do not require counterweights. This makes them very portable and also suitable for travelling. An optional counterweight is available for the two new models, which can be used to increase the load capacity even further. This considerably extends the range of optics and applications that can be used.
The new tripod for these mounts is also noteworthy. The WAVE Carbon tripod can also be used with the WAVE SA column extension for the popular Star Adventurer series of photo mounts.
Both models of the new WAVE mounts are available with or without tripod and can be found here in our shop.
Mounts with strain wave gear from ZWO, iOptron and PegasusAstro
April 19 2024, Stefan Taube
Innovative manufacturers have been offering astronomical mounts with a special drive design for a few years now. You can find these in the shop under the Harmonic / Strainwave link.
These mounts are equipped with a so-called strain wave gear. It is also known under the protected brand name Harmonic Drive.
The advantages are:
- High load capacity with low dead weight
- High torsional rigidity: no counterweights required
- Relatively inexpensive, as industry standard
- No swivelling error (“backlash”)
- Very high reduction ratio
- Compact dimensions
- Maintenance-free and backlash-free in the long term
The strain wave gear is used for the axes of industrial robots, among other things. It is therefore a standard and does not need to be specially developed and built for astronomical mounts.
Although the periodic gearbox error is also high for strain wave gears, the error typical of worm shafts, which occurs when the direction of rotation changes (“backlash”), is eliminated. This means that the strain wave gear reacts immediately to the control impulses, so that the periodic error can be compensated very well by autoguiding.
For large mounts, such as the Skywatcher EQ-8, the mounts from 10Micron or the CGX-L from Celestron, a worm shaft is still the first choice, because optics with a long focal length require a very low periodic gear error and a counterweight cannot be dispensed with for heavy optics, even with a strain wave gear. In addition, the advantages of strain wave gears in terms of compactness, weight and price are lost as soon as a mount with a high load capacity is required.
There is therefore an ideal range of load capacity in which mounts with a strain wave gear can play to their strengths. The requirements for mobile astrophotography with small to medium-sized optics fall within this range. The harmonic mounts from brands like iOptron, PegasusAstro, RainbowAstro and ZWO are designed precisely for these requirements.
You can find all mounts with strain wave gear under the Harmonic / Strainwave link in the shop.
Typical strain wave gear to industry standard
New Sphinx mount from Vixen: SX2WL WiFi
January 25 2024, Stefan Taube
With the SX2WL model, the Japanese manufacturer Vixen is launching a new mount in the Sphinx series.
The SX2WL is the first Sphinx mount to be equipped with a Wireless Unit. It generates a local WLAN so that the mount can be controlled via a smartphone, using the free STAR BOOK Wireless App. This App offers all the functionalities of the previous STARBOOK TEN with manual controls simply via your smartphone. This significantly reduces the power consumption of the mount!
The SX2WL is ideal for mobile astrophotography: It can carry up to 12 kilograms, but weights only 7 kilograms. Due to the design of the Sphinx mounts the motors act as counterweights and only a light additional counterweight is required.
Like all Sphinx mounts, the SX2WL also impresses with its high quality standards Made In Japan!
You can find more information and the current price here in the shop.
