Homebuilt EQ mounts

Hello, all
I was wondering if anyone out there has had any luck with building thier own EQ mount? I am very mechanically inclined (I used to build race car engines) and know of a couple local machine shops that do one of a kind parts. I have a C8 on a fork mount with spur gear drive. I would like to do photography with it and have discovered that exposures are limited do to the mechanics of the drive. I guess my question is, is it worth the effort to build my own or would I save myself alot of hassle by buying one. Portability is not an issue as I would permanently mount it on a pier.I am more interested in acurate mechanics.
Thanks for the input

Since getting a lathe about a year and a half ago, I've built one GEM and I'm completing a second (larger) one. The enginering is simple. Getting appropriate precision, not so simple.
I use cheap commercial ball bearings in aluminum with stainless steel shafts. The picture is the mount I've been working on since April. It uses 40 mm bearings with shafts that are nominally 1.5".

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Hi Tony,
I'm amazed at the high quality of mounts that some people have made.
As others pointed out, the cost in materials isn't enormous but the amount of time that you put in building the mount is enormous. I don't think that I would tackle this without having my own machine shop. Having your local machine shop build one-of-a-kind parts gets expensive real fast.
The satisfaction of producing a well-made mount by yourself is, however, as they say, priceless.
Here's one mount project:
http://www.heavensgloryobservatory.com/new_mount_design.htm
If you do buy a commercial mount, there are still many opportunities to do machining, etc. You could keep yourself quite busy making adaptors, custom knobs, and whatnot for various projects. I always find myself doing some metalworking thing for the observatory.

dan kowall
photonhunter.com

Tony,
I built the pictured mount below with no machining skills what-so-ever. A hand drill, Dremel tool and palm sander were the only power tools used. I did have a shop weld the heavy mounting flanges to the ends of the shafts. I copied the design from Optic-Craft. 1" shafts.

http://www.opticcraft.com/

It is nowhere near as elegant as Steve's mount but does function very well. The tough parts are the drive gears and drive electronics. It has a 9.3" Thomas Mathis drive on RA and a Byers 7-1/2" starmaster on Dec.. The picture shows it with the AC drive motors with an inverter/corrector mounted in the pier. I have since replaced the AC system with a Losmandy G-11 drive and motors. I had good results imaging with my 6" (40 min exposures) with the ac drive, have not imaged with the dc yet but don't foresee any problems.
Now for the second part of your question.
Is it worth the effort?
It was for me. I was living well below the poverty level, a single parent, and could not purchase a mount outright, but I could spend 25-50 bucks on parts every other month or so.
Cost: Less than $300 on alum., bearings, shafts, pier etc.. $600 on drives and electronics. 10 years (maybe more) from start to current iteration, and there have been many iterations.

Bob

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