[donkeybeer]

So do you think that complex mechanism ended up no better than the normal mounts? It could be execution too, I am no good at experiments and sometimes even "proven" designs end up a bit subpar, so it could be the design was alright.

[waerhert]

Not sure what you mean with complex mechanism. The mount has a similar architecture to other commercially available mounts like the HEM15 iPolar for example.

[donkeybeer]

Oh ok. I didn't know harmonic drives were standard in commercial mounts.

[Aaargh20318]

They have become popular in the last few years. They are smaller, lighter and thus more portable than traditional mounts. They also don’t need to be balanced with a counter-weight (although they usually allow for a counter weight to increase payload capacity, they don’t need to be perfectly balanced). This all saves in set-up time.

One disadvantage compared to traditional mounts is that they absolutely need guidance, and with a pretty fast guide loop at that (like 0.5s). You can’t do long unguided exposures with a strain wave. But anyone who’s serious about astrophotography is guiding anyway so that’s not really a big deal.

[donkeybeer]

I am a bit idly curious since I plan to build a telescope sometime. Nothing as complex as this, just a manually guided dobson.