My experience using Eazy Outs on exhaust studs on cylinder heads has
not been good. I know that the telescope situation is different.
What is the diameter of screw? As long as you are sure that screw
isn't cross-threaded, you should be alright but every-time I've used
one, I have gone in with the assumption that I will have to take the
head to a machine shop to drill out the stud and the broken, hardened
steel Easy Out.
Good luck.
Greg

Good suggestion. I was thinking about something like this.

Pete

--- In ap-gto@..., kawasaki99@... wrote:

Hello Strong Man,
Local hardware store ought to sell an (easy-out)

which is a

sort of a left hand thread tap and the proper size pilot drill for the
easy-out. If it's only hand tight to ought to come out. Have an

assistant hold a

vacuum cleaner hose close to broken screw while drilling the pilot

hole to

capture any small chips. A small center drill or sharp prick punch

may be necessary

to ensure the pilot drill puts the hole close to the true center of

the

broken screw. Sounds like a lot but it's generally easy.



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Unfortunately, the piece that remains in the mount is 3mm INSIDE the
casting (the knob came off with 5mm - enough to leave the rest truely
embedded).

Pete

--- In ap-gto@..., "Peter Santangeli" <peter@...> wrote:

Sadly, while setting up today in my yard, I went to tighten one of my
RA clutch knobs on my AP900 and it snapped off in my hand. It broke
off about 5mm down, so that I can just see about 2 mm of the bolt
inside of it. The rest of the shaft is no doubt stuck down in the hole
it screws into.

A couple of questions...

Is there a way for me to get the shaft out?
Can I order a replacement?
Am I stuck sending my RA assembly back to AP :-(
Any danger of me using it this way until a convenient time?

I'm really surprise - I've never, ever tightened this much. Never used
hex keys, for instance. I must be stronger than I thought!

Pete

Sounds like you had a faulty part. I doubt that you could have twisted
it off otherwise. Now, getting it out is going to be a thorny issue.

One of the first things that come to mind is to use a Dremel tool with
a cut-off wheel attachement to carefully grind a slot across the
exposed end of the 2mm portion extending out of the piece and then use
a flat blade screwdriver to back it out.

Another is to use a brand new set of high quality vise grips so that
the biting edge is new and sharp. 2mm isn't much to grip but it might
be possible.

The next obvious method is using a bolt extractor, but this will
probably require a drill press and some sort of jig to hold the head
in position. You might be able to use a hand held drill to drill the
hole for the extractor if you use a Dremel and grind a cross centered
on the exposed broken end. The center of the cross will act a a guide
to center the bit for the hole. If it looks like this isn't going to
work, or you are not mechanically inclined with small parts and
precise work, I think taking the head to a machine shop or possibly
shipping it back to AP is in order. Give AP a call on Monday and see
what they say.

In the meantime, I can't see why you can't use the mount.

Rick.

Sadly, while setting up today in my yard, I went to tighten one of my
RA clutch knobs on my AP900 and it snapped off in my hand. It broke
off about 5mm down, so that I can just see about 2 mm of the bolt
inside of it. The rest of the shaft is no doubt stuck down in the hole
it screws into.

A couple of questions...

Is there a way for me to get the shaft out?
Can I order a replacement?
Am I stuck sending my RA assembly back to AP :-(
Any danger of me using it this way until a convenient time?

I'm really surprise - I've never, ever tightened this much. Never used
hex keys, for instance. I must be stronger than I thought!

Pete

To all,
Astro-Physics will be closed for the Holiday Season beginning December 22 and will officially reopen on Thursday, January 3, 2008. Please understand that we will not be shipping for most of the first week of January as we take inventory (we have a lot of parts to count).
Roland and I will not be in the office next week. If you have any questions, please contact our capable staff for assistance. Of coarse, you can call on the expertise of the people on this user group, as well. I am always amazed and gratified at the way all of you help each other out when questions come up. We particularly appreciate this over the weekends and during holiday periods. You are extraordinary individuals and we areproud to count you among our customers and friends.

We wish all of you and your families a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year. We appreciate your support and business throughout 2007 and look forward to offering exciting products in 2008.

Please enjoy the holiday card posted on our website:
http://www.astro-physics.com/xmas07.htm




Marj Christen
Astro-Physics, Inc
11250 Forest Hills Road
Machesney Park, IL 61115
Phone: 815-282-1513
Fax: 815-282-9847
www.astro-physics.com
Please include this e-mail with your response.

Hello Strong Man,
Local hardware store ought to sell an (easy-out) which is a
sort of a left hand thread tap and the proper size pilot drill for the
easy-out. If it's only hand tight to ought to come out. Have an assistant hold a
vacuum cleaner hose close to broken screw while drilling the pilot hole to
capture any small chips. A small center drill or sharp prick punch may be necessary
to ensure the pilot drill puts the hole close to the true center of the
broken screw. Sounds like a lot but it's generally easy.



**************************************See AOL's top rated recipes
(http://food.aol.com/top-rated-recipes?NCID=aoltop00030000000004)

Hi Ray,
I just want to second all your points. USB is very convenient, but
Ethernet is much more robust. I also find that serial is very robust.
Rick

--- In ap-gto@..., "Ray Gralak" <rgr@...> wrote:

Hi John,

There are many examples of USB unreliability if you search the net

(as with

almost any other hardware interface). I've personally seen USB

errors happen

hundreds of times in my day job. And they *absolutely* do happen

to USB

storage systems. I think for storage systems to be reliable the
firmware/software app needs to confirm the writes and repeat if

necessary.

In any case I think USB is a bad choice for telescopes/cameras in

general.

Ethernet is far more robust and works on every system available

without

having to create a driver. Also, USB plugs can come out too

easily. Ethernet

connectors have a more reliable plug, and even if it does get

unplugged

won't bring your mount link down if you use a connectionless

network

protocol (i.e., UDP).

-Ray

-----Original Message-----
From: ap-gto@... [mailto:ap-gto@...]
On Behalf Of John Winfield
Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2007 12:48 PM
To: ap-gto@...
Subject: [ap-gto] Re: Desperately trying (this is the correct
one) ... (Happy) end...

Hmm, I'm not sure I'd agree - my day job is developing USB based
storage systems and if it's good enough for reliably

transferring tens

of megabytes of data per second, it can probably cope with a few

ASCII

characters.

Presumably he's aware of the (lack of) robust error checking on

an

RS232 serial line?
The single parity bit on RS232 isn't very reliable - the USB

datagrams

are CRC32 protected.
I think the AP mount uses 8-N-1, so there's not even parity

checking

being performed on the RS232 comms currently.

John

--- In ap-gto@...
<mailto:ap-gto%40yahoogroups.com> , chris1011@ wrote:

In a message dated 12/12/2007 10:01:20 PM Central Standard

Time,

rdcrisp@ writes:

another suggestion is to abandon serial ports entirely,

as has the pc

industry across the board largely, and just adopt USB or

USB2.0 etc.

USB is not robust, according to our software engineer. It

can result in

dropped bits that can cause problems.

Rolando


**************************************
See AOL's top rated recipes

(http://food.aol.com/top-rated-recipes?NCID=aoltop000300000000
04 <http://food.aol.com/top-rated-recipes?

NCID=aoltop00030000000004> )

--- In ap-gto@..., "Ben Ritchie" <count.zero@...> wrote:

P.S. in an attempt to keep this slightly on-topic, i'd just like to
say that my 1200GTO is undoubtedly the best Astronomy purchase I ever
made. It's just an absolute pleasure to use... :)

Ben,

I am so impressed with my AP1200GTO, I will be looking to pick up
another one during 2008. In fact, I have a little dilemma ... one
AP3600 or two AP1200???? I suspect the latter so as to have multiple
scopes imaging at each opportunity. YES!!!

Anthony.

I *think* it should be fixable by modifying the ST7-RC adapter to swap
X- and Y- (in fact, the adapter may be the cause of the problem).

Yes, good point. I forgot about the ST7-RC adapter.

Sorry, i'll stop cluttering up the list with SBIG-speak!

No problem with me since we all use one of the two to three programs
out there for image acquisition. Also, seeing such problems is
educational for all of us. Case in point is your experience right now
and which is something I have never encountered personally or in any
of the groups I follow.

Anthony.

I've just taken the ST7-RC to pieces (hope I can get it back together
again ;) and i'm fairly sure X+ and Y+ are swapped in the adapter.
Looking at SBIG's wiring diagram, pin 3 of the 9-pin plug (X+) is
connected to pin 2 of the RJ11 socket (Y+), so when the camera issues
an X+ slew it's going to go to Y+ on the mount - and vice versa (pin 4
-> pin 1). I'll check with SBIG before rewiring it, but I think that's
it. Chalk up another one to the list of "weird things that can go
wrong while imaging".

At least it's the cheapest bit to replace ;)

Ben.

P.S. in an attempt to keep this slightly on-topic, i'd just like to
say that my 1200GTO is undoubtedly the best Astronomy purchase I ever
made. It's just an absolute pleasure to use... :)

--- In ap-gto@..., "Ben Ritchie" <count.zero@...> wrote:

--- In ap-gto@..., "ayiomamitis" <ayiomami@> wrote:

I am also a dedicated CCDSoft user and I have NEVER seen such
behaviour. I am almost convinced it is the camera.

As an aside, a better means to assess how parallel the camera is with
the axes of the mount is to look at the calibration result tab which
gives a very nice graphic of the +X, -X, +Y and -Y movements and the
associated calibrated results/values for each second of pulse.

Hi Anthony

Hi Ben,

The calibration graphic is clearly wrong.

My comment in relation to the graphic was in response to your comment
that you use the slews with the hand controller to see how close you
are to having the two sets of axes (camera and mount) parallel. A
really neat way is to look at the graphic following a calibration and
which will show you precisely how well they match.

Sadly I can't attach a
screen grab on these forums (I think?) but the values I get (pixels/s
and angle) are

X+ 9.2436 1.8809
X- 6.8117 91.0365
Y+ 6.8739 271.3662
Y- 9.2714 181.4919

The good thing about these numbers is that they show a very good
calibration (ignoring the problem of the mixed up X+/Y- and X-/Y+).

so X+ and Y- are pretty much perfectly matched, as are X- and Y+. The
graph looks almost perfect ... until you realise that the labels are
wrong.

Yes, I agree.

I *think* it should be fixable by modifying the ST7-RC adapter to swap
X- and Y- (in fact, the adapter may be the cause of the problem).

Yes, good point. I forgot about the ST7-RC adapter.

Sorry, i'll stop cluttering up the list with SBIG-speak!

No problem with me since we all use one of the two to three programs
out there for image acquisition. Also, seeing such problems is
educational for all of us. Case in point is your experience right now
and which is something I have never encountered personally or in any
of the groups I follow.

Anthony.

Ben.

Richard Crisp wrote:

the headline says it all

I want to use an APGTO CP3 (1200 mount)

Currently I use Maxim DL 3.21 and The Sky along with FocusMax
Is ASCOM the best way to go or is something else better?

What are people in this group using?

Hi Richard,

I have and use ACP but it requires Maxim v4.xx. And yes it uses ASCOM.


Regards

Bill

--

William R. Mattil : http://www.celestial-images.com

--- In ap-gto@..., "ayiomamitis" <ayiomami@...> wrote:

I am also a dedicated CCDSoft user and I have NEVER seen such
behaviour. I am almost convinced it is the camera.

As an aside, a better means to assess how parallel the camera is with
the axes of the mount is to look at the calibration result tab which
gives a very nice graphic of the +X, -X, +Y and -Y movements and the
associated calibrated results/values for each second of pulse.

Hi Anthony

The calibration graphic is clearly wrong. Sadly I can't attach a
screen grab on these forums (I think?) but the values I get (pixels/s
and angle) are

X+ 9.2436 1.8809
X- 6.8117 91.0365
Y+ 6.8739 271.3662
Y- 9.2714 181.4919

so X+ and Y- are pretty much perfectly matched, as are X- and Y+. The
graph looks almost perfect ... until you realise that the labels are
wrong.

I *think* it should be fixable by modifying the ST7-RC adapter to swap
X- and Y- (in fact, the adapter may be the cause of the problem).

Sorry, i'll stop cluttering up the list with SBIG-speak!

Ben.

the headline says it all

I want to use an APGTO CP3 (1200 mount)

Currently I use Maxim DL 3.21 and The Sky along with FocusMax

Is ASCOM the best way to go or is something else better?

What are people in this group using?

Wade --

The standard pier adapter already has holes drilled and countersunk for
mounting to a flat surface. See:

http://www.astro-physics.com/tech_support/mounts/12pierad.htm

for details. You'd need to drill and tap your existing pier top to
match, or if it already has threaded holes that don't match, you could
drill and countersink additional holes in the standard pier adapter.

It won't give quite as much of a "dressed finish" look at the flat
surface adapter (since the shoulder and outside threaded holes will be
exposed), but it works fine.

-- Jeff.


________________________________

From: ap-gto@... [mailto:ap-gto@...] On
Behalf Of Dean S
Sent: Friday, December 14, 2007 1:43 PM
To: ap-gto@...
Subject: Re: [ap-gto] Pier Adapter Options for 2002 AP-1200GTO



Hi Wade,

If I understand it correctly, you can drill and counter sink
holes in the
standard pier adapter so you can bolt it down to your plate.

In my case I bought the new Rotating pier adapter so I had to
have the Flat
Surface Adapter to mount first on my flat plate.

So save the money and get only the standard pier adapter and
mount it
directly to your plate.

Dean

Hi Wade,

If I understand it correctly, you can drill and counter sink holes in the
standard pier adapter so you can bolt it down to your plate.

In my case I bought the new Rotating pier adapter so I had to have the Flat
Surface Adapter to mount first on my flat plate.

So save the money and get only the standard pier adapter and mount it
directly to your plate.

Dean

--- In ap-gto@..., "Ben Ritchie" <count.zero@...> wrote:

--- In ap-gto@..., chris1011@ wrote:

Unless there is something wrong with the software (which I doubt)

then you

might have an incorrect connection in your camera's guider port. The

AP guider

port has the correct connection for standard SBIG cameras (the

connector is

directly soldered to the circuit board, so the channels can never be

mixed up).

If the SBIG camera has wires connected to the guider port, then they

might be

soldered on wrong, thus giving you this mixed up command sequence.

If you had

the wrong guider cable wiring with the wires flipped end for end,

the system

would not work at all.

Rolando

Thanks Roland. I get the same effect in CCDOps and CCDSoft, so I don't
think it's the software. We clouded over pretty quickly last night so
I didn't get more time to troubleshoot, but I have a ST-402ME too that
I can use - I think if that calibrates correctly then it's pointing to
a problem with the ST-4000XCM.

I am also a dedicated CCDSoft user and I have NEVER seen such
behaviour. I am almost convinced it is the camera.

As an aside, a better means to assess how parallel the camera is with
the axes of the mount is to look at the calibration result tab which
gives a very nice graphic of the +X, -X, +Y and -Y movements and the
associated calibrated results/values for each second of pulse.

Also, something which I never have been able to get to work within
CCDSoft is the maximum correction that the autoguider is allowed to make.

Anthony.

Ben.

In a message dated 12/13/2007 8:35:43 PM Central Standard Time,
winfij@... writes:

Fair enough. I've never tried running multiple commands simultaneously
even when I have the handset and PC connected together - I've either
used one other other but not both at exactly the same time with
conflicting commands (e.g. two gotos).

No problem. The mount will respond to your commands no matter where they come
from. It goes (logically) to the last command issued, regardless where the
command came from. It is happy to slew all day long as fast as you can command a
new slew, and it will never get confused in this situation.

Rolando


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--- In ap-gto@..., chris1011@... wrote:

Unless there is something wrong with the software (which I doubt)

then you

might have an incorrect connection in your camera's guider port. The

AP guider

port has the correct connection for standard SBIG cameras (the

connector is

directly soldered to the circuit board, so the channels can never be

mixed up).

If the SBIG camera has wires connected to the guider port, then they

might be

soldered on wrong, thus giving you this mixed up command sequence.

If you had

the wrong guider cable wiring with the wires flipped end for end,

the system

would not work at all.

Rolando

Thanks Roland. I get the same effect in CCDOps and CCDSoft, so I don't
think it's the software. We clouded over pretty quickly last night so
I didn't get more time to troubleshoot, but I have a ST-402ME too that
I can use - I think if that calibrates correctly then it's pointing to
a problem with the ST-4000XCM.

Ben.