Regarding the guiding, harmonic drives are very sensitive to seeing conditions. In bad seeing, I recommend 1s exposures and .5s on good seeing. On my AM5, in air polluted, bortle 10 skies😆, I've gotten .25rms on good nights with 120mm and 128mm guidescope. PEC on with 430 steps and hysterasis on auto. Excellent work and I would love to see v2.
Very impressed. I also saw the Ed video and immediately thought of that. Glad the scope is ok. My AM5 seems to love .5 to 1 sec guide exposures. Makes a big difference on guiding.
This project has been awesome to see! I'm glad nothing seems to be broken because of the fall. 1 arcsecond guiding on your first go?! That's impressive :)
Hi, well done on making an excellent series. I'm making a harmonic drive mount - RA so far, with my DEC drive on it's way from China. I'm using the drives from aliexpress that you showed in the video. They seem pretty good, though I've not had any weight on mine yet. I'll definitely be careful of my mount falling over after seeing what happened to yours. I'm pleased for you that you had no serious damage there! Good luck with your continuing project. It's so much more interesting than a trip to the shop for an AM5!
Oh my God!!! When I saw your scope on the ground!!! Luckily the scope and the mount survived... Looking forward to see this new mount on a dark night...
Very cool Whyf16uy! Yeah at the start of the AM5 being told no counterweights needed! True but with scopes that as short and not off balance as Harmonic drives don't need to be balanced, but a suggestion I was told is to take say your SN8 and put on a table and with a pencil or wood dowel find the center spot of balance with all of your eq on it and mark the dovetail tail and then place the SN8 in the center of your dovetail clamp and then you should be centered balanced, but due to the size of the SN8 use a counterweight to prevent tipping over. I just got an SN8 and mounted it on the AM5 using the TC40 CF tripod and used a 35 lbs weight on the tripod bad to prevent it from tipping over but later I added a counterweight just for insurance. I am noticing with a high power EP of 4/5mm it does vibrate in the garage looking across the street with some wind. So maybe shooting at a wide field won't be a real issue in images? But at high power EP it was... Would like to get the STL file for the SN8 please...Looking forward to hear more from you!
I in fact have done just that (balancing the OTA on the dovetail and marking the center). What STL are you wanting? The only thing I really have is the dew shield that I designed.
I watched Eds post and when I saw your scope on the floor I could not help but feel your initial pain, glad your getting closer to finally achieving your goal, btw thanks for the link that's fantastic and so much cheaper than I could find...
Proud of this series and glad you have come this far. I have been looking to build a mount as well and was really thinking of pulling the trigger on those 90 dollar used drives. Not so sure now. I have the AliExpress drives a thought and despite being significantly cheaper the manufacturer claims they have +- 10 arcsecs of backlash. Another minor detail I noticed while going through the schematics is that the input shaft is keyed. i.e you would need a stepper motor with a keyed shaft to drive the h.d
Well done on getting the mount working my friend, I remember watching Ed Tings video & seeing your scope lying there I were like uh oh!! I'm so glad it survived though & building a harmonic drive mount for a smidge over $500 you've gotta be happy about that. I look forward to seeing some images produced with it next clear skies & clouds do indeed suck!!
Great video, you've done a brilliant job on the project really enjoying following your progress looking forward to seeing you your first light with this set up, thanks for taking the time to make these videos and all the information you supply
@@whyf16uy a good friend of mine has a Haas cnc mill and I think I’d like to try design something like this. It’d be nice to have an off the shelf, new harmonic drive and machined aluminum (or steel for that matter) plates that anyone could put together.
Look up the phd2 settings for the AM5. Your results are similar to mine. I couldn't get sub 1 arc second tracking. Gonna pull mine out of the shed in a couple weeks and rework the metal. Great work.
im a bit baffled...first light on a homemade mount, with a 10" newt...and you sit inside?????? thats almost asking for it ...anyway..your an inspiration...great work !! and subscribed
Thank you very much for your videos! I have been thinking about building a mount on harmonic reducers and am currently studying other people's experiences. Tell me how harmonic reducers behave in the cold? I live in Russia and it is quite cold here in the winter, the most extreme temperatures when I was filming DeepSky were -45 degrees Celsius. I am worried that the grease inside the reducer will thicken.
Very well done! I am surprised it works that well already since you connect the timing belt pulleys to an "oldham coupling" that has a few mm play in radial direction. Luckily your scope survived.
I actually had to look that up. I am not using one. The pulleys are connected directly to the shafts on the stepper and the drive. If you are looking at the picture I inserted during the "crash" explanation, that is the wave generator that had popped out of the flex spline.
The Oldham coupling is part of the wave generator. Study page 41 of this document to see how it works: harmonicdrive.de/fileadmin/user_upload/2014_11_ED_1019658_HFUS-2A.pdf
My UMi 17 harmonic mount thrives off 0.5-1s exposures, and low max movement duration. I use 800ms for Dec and 1100 for Ra I believe? Honestly it’s been a while since I was looking at all of that. Stupid clouds.
I've heard you should use short exposures but if it doesn't work it doesn't work. I was using .5 on my worm drive because that's what worked for me. I just kept the same settings, but I will try a few things.
Hi, well done on making an excellent series. I'm making a harmonic drive mount - RA so far, with my DEC drive on it's way from China. I'm using the drives from aliexpress that you showed in the video. They seem pretty good, though I've not had any weight on mine yet. I'll definitely be careful of my mount falling over after seeing what happened to yours. I'm pleased for you that you had no serious damage there! Good luck with your continuing project. It's so much more interesting than a trip to the shop for an AM5!
![[UNCUT] เก็บ "สจ.โต้ง" เอี่ยวมาเฟีย รู้ตัวคนบงการ ก่อนสั่งลั่นไก I คนดังนั่งเคลียร์ I 13 ธ.ค.67](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/o-J_p62D40w/mqdefault.jpg)
Regarding the guiding, harmonic drives are very sensitive to seeing conditions. In bad seeing, I recommend 1s exposures and .5s on good seeing. On my AM5, in air polluted, bortle 10 skies😆, I've gotten .25rms on good nights with 120mm and 128mm guidescope. PEC on with 430 steps and hysterasis on auto. Excellent work and I would love to see v2.
If ever I get clear skies I am going to try all the settings recommended for the AM5
Glad to see it recovered! I looks forward to seeing how it does in the future
Once I get it dialed in there will be a follow up
Very impressed. I also saw the Ed video and immediately thought of that. Glad the scope is ok. My AM5 seems to love .5 to 1 sec guide exposures. Makes a big difference on guiding.
Thanks
This project has been awesome to see! I'm glad nothing seems to be broken because of the fall. 1 arcsecond guiding on your first go?! That's impressive :)
Thanks. Hopefully sub arc second soon 🤞
Great video series! Glad to see that your telescope survived with not much damage to it!
Hi, well done on making an excellent series. I'm making a harmonic drive mount - RA so far, with my DEC drive on it's way from China. I'm using the drives from aliexpress that you showed in the video. They seem pretty good, though I've not had any weight on mine yet. I'll definitely be careful of my mount falling over after seeing what happened to yours. I'm pleased for you that you had no serious damage there! Good luck with your continuing project. It's so much more interesting than a trip to the shop for an AM5!
Oh my God!!! When I saw your scope on the ground!!! Luckily the scope and the mount survived... Looking forward to see this new mount on a dark night...
Yeah I got pretty lucky
Really glad nothing broke !
@@DawidKellerman you and me both
nice cold blood reaction when it all went wrong, very ambitious project ! thanks fpr sharing
Very cool Whyf16uy! Yeah at the start of the AM5 being told no counterweights needed! True but with scopes that as short and not off balance as Harmonic drives don't need to be balanced, but a suggestion I was told is to take say your SN8 and put on a table and with a pencil or wood dowel find the center spot of balance with all of your eq on it and mark the dovetail tail and then place the SN8 in the center of your dovetail clamp and then you should be centered balanced, but due to the size of the SN8 use a counterweight to prevent tipping over. I just got an SN8 and mounted it on the AM5 using the TC40 CF tripod and used a 35 lbs weight on the tripod bad to prevent it from tipping over but later I added a counterweight just for insurance. I am noticing with a high power EP of 4/5mm it does vibrate in the garage looking across the street with some wind. So maybe shooting at a wide field won't be a real issue in images? But at high power EP it was... Would like to get the STL file for the SN8 please...Looking forward to hear more from you!
I in fact have done just that (balancing the OTA on the dovetail and marking the center). What STL are you wanting? The only thing I really have is the dew shield that I designed.
I watched Eds post and when I saw your scope on the floor I could not help but feel your initial pain, glad your getting closer to finally achieving your goal, btw thanks for the link that's fantastic and so much cheaper than I could find...
I want to see yours when it is done.
Proud of this series and glad you have come this far. I have been looking to build a mount as well and was really thinking of pulling the trigger on those 90 dollar used drives. Not so sure now. I have the AliExpress drives a thought and despite being significantly cheaper the manufacturer claims they have +- 10 arcsecs of backlash. Another minor detail I noticed while going through the schematics is that the input shaft is keyed. i.e you would need a stepper motor with a keyed shaft to drive the h.d
There are other drives on aliexpress with set screw shafts. Not sure about the backlash thing. You'd think new gears would have 0.
@@whyf16uy could you send me the links of the drive you are mentioning? The one I am talking about mentions the backlash in the product description
@@rayyanimran1557 www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805489684533.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.main.77.6414l7sjl7sjUW&algo_pvid=c5c28411-a1cc-4ffb-b3ba-7d7347df36a9&algo_exp_id=c5c28411-a1cc-4ffb-b3ba-7d7347df36a9-38&pdp_npi=4%40dis%21USD%21160.67%21160.67%21%21%211157.57%211157.57%21%40210308a617111630556096253ec78e%2112000033978515623%21sea%21US%210%21AB&curPageLogUid=kRs3eN4iudvH&utparam-url=scene%3Asearch%7Cquery_from%3A
Well done on getting the mount working my friend, I remember watching Ed Tings video & seeing your scope lying there I were like uh oh!! I'm so glad it survived though & building a harmonic drive mount for a smidge over $500 you've gotta be happy about that. I look forward to seeing some images produced with it next clear skies & clouds do indeed suck!!
Was stressful there for a moment NGL
great work. I am flitting between trying to build a mount or buy one. capacity being my main constraint.
@@IvanProsper this is the only way I can afford what I want
@@whyf16uy same. I can afford a small simple mount or I could build a bigger mount with better capacity and features :)
@@IvanProsper Look into OnStep. Pretty full featured controller. And Open source.
Great video, you've done a brilliant job on the project really enjoying following your progress looking forward to seeing you your first light with this set up, thanks for taking the time to make these videos and all the information you supply
Great project man, and way to stick with it. Can't wait to see how this performs over the long run.
At least I'm heading in the right direction
@@whyf16uy a good friend of mine has a Haas cnc mill and I think I’d like to try design something like this. It’d be nice to have an off the shelf, new harmonic drive and machined aluminum (or steel for that matter) plates that anyone could put together.
@JohnScherer access to a cnc would be a dream come true
Look up the phd2 settings for the AM5. Your results are similar to mine. I couldn't get sub 1 arc second tracking. Gonna pull mine out of the shed in a couple weeks and rework the metal. Great work.
Thank you. I have been reading all the AM5 stuff I can find.
im a bit baffled...first light on a homemade mount, with a 10" newt...and you sit inside?????? thats almost asking for it ...anyway..your an inspiration...great work !! and subscribed
Don't be baffled, I'm not smart. It's an 8 inch, but that doesn't change anything.
fascuinating stuff thx !EDIT: juist realizing this might be my scene after being online since 1994
😁
Thank you very much for your videos! I have been thinking about building a mount on harmonic reducers and am currently studying other people's experiences. Tell me how harmonic reducers behave in the cold? I live in Russia and it is quite cold here in the winter, the most extreme temperatures when I was filming DeepSky were -45 degrees Celsius. I am worried that the grease inside the reducer will thicken.
Well so far the coldest I've ran it at is -4 Celsius so I can't really tell you. Sorry.
Very well done! I am surprised it works that well already since you connect the timing belt pulleys to an "oldham coupling" that has a few mm play in radial direction. Luckily your scope survived.
I actually had to look that up. I am not using one. The pulleys are connected directly to the shafts on the stepper and the drive. If you are looking at the picture I inserted during the "crash" explanation, that is the wave generator that had popped out of the flex spline.
That whole contraption with the aluminum plate, the notches and the circlip, inside and behind the wave-gen bearing ís the oldham coupling…
You have it in your hand in the first video at 6:48.
@@Dhansvw according to harmonicdrive.net that is called the wave generator. www.harmonicdrive.net/technology/harmonicdrive
The Oldham coupling is part of the wave generator. Study page 41 of this document to see how it works: harmonicdrive.de/fileadmin/user_upload/2014_11_ED_1019658_HFUS-2A.pdf
My UMi 17 harmonic mount thrives off 0.5-1s exposures, and low max movement duration. I use 800ms for Dec and 1100 for Ra I believe? Honestly it’s been a while since I was looking at all of that. Stupid clouds.
I'll look into the max movement. Clouds suck
Sorry for the accident. You didn't try slewing the ota indoor to check the weight balance?
Not before the mishap. I never said I was bright.
Chrome remote desktop will work on your phone if that would be handy for standing nearby your mount :)
I just use remote desktop on my ipad. But I was lazy that night and was sitting inside. In hind site, not a good idea when testing.
Great video ty
@jesuschrist2284 thank you
Nice work!
Thank you
.. mine starts to oscillate, I have to do 2 seconds... maybe it's trying to track the poor seeing for me.
I've heard you should use short exposures but if it doesn't work it doesn't work. I was using .5 on my worm drive because that's what worked for me. I just kept the same settings, but I will try a few things.
Hi, well done on making an excellent series. I'm making a harmonic drive mount - RA so far, with my DEC drive on it's way from China. I'm using the drives from aliexpress that you showed in the video. They seem pretty good, though I've not had any weight on mine yet. I'll definitely be careful of my mount falling over after seeing what happened to yours. I'm pleased for you that you had no serious damage there! Good luck with your continuing project. It's so much more interesting than a trip to the shop for an AM5!
Let us know the quality of these drives.
@@whyf16uy when I get the chance to do some testing,.I'll let you know.