David:That really does suprise me. Mine was indeed an EQ-6 Pro (White in color) and I never remember hearing those kind of noises out of it. Bill Cowles and others have commented on Cloudy Nights as to how quiet they are. Different experience for different folks eh?Steve > > Regarding the Atlas. I am not sure what others experiences are but yes,
they can make some very ugly noises when they are starting and stopping their high speed slews. This noise is coming from the idle gear that is between the gear that drives the worm and the tear attached to the motor. They didn't install any bearings on this gear, just copper washers, so as it starts to speed up, the pressure causes some sort of harmonic vibrations that cause the gear to make some nasty sounds. The mount also makes a very high pitched "shew whit" sound while it is tracking. It is not loud, I find it kind of pleasant.
What I did to fix the nasty start and stop high speed slews sound was to replace the copper washers with Teflon ones. That seems to have done the trick. This is a very well documented problem with the atlas mounts. If you join the Yahoo EQ-G EQ-6 group you will see it comes up a lot. It is not a hard modification, and they say if you don't mind the sound it actually isn't doing any damage to the mount. I am just one of those need to know guys so I tore mine apart.
All in all the Atlas is a great mount. It is pretty much a clone of the Sky Scan EQ-6 that Orion has made changes to. I did hypertune mine and have some instructions I found online for doing so also posted on my site. For the money, you cant beat the atlas's weight capacity and accuracy.
Cheers,
David
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