Fork to tripod arrangement of Nexstar SLT

[TonyBegg]

I have two main questions. (1) Do the Nexstar SLT scopes (not the SE's) have a mount to tripod arrangement that has a plastic protrusion under the (half-)fork mating with a bowl in the tripod? I have a Sky Prodigy scope and it has this arrangement and looks superficially like a Nexstar SLT (from pictures I have seen), so I wonder whether Celestron created the bowl arrangement to make it simpler for beginners to connect mount to tripod, or whether they were re-using the older Nexstar SLT design. Would be easy to answer myself if I had a Nexstar SLT at hand (which maybe some of you have), but no telescope dealers in the vicinity. (2) If they are in fact similar in this regard, have any Nexstar SLT scope owners "upgraded" their tripods to something more rigid, and could they find a beefier (Celestron?) tripod with the bowl to mate with or were they able to do something (remove the protrusion on the mount?) so they could use a flat plate tripod head? I haven't begun dismantling the Sky Prodigy yet, but noticed that the protrusion is bolted to the mount with a bolt that could be the size of the tripod to mount connecting bolt on my CG5GT. I am leery that that bolt may have some other function and I will mess things up by unscrewing it.

[sxinias]

Hi,

Having never seen a Prodigy, I can not be 100% on this. My impression is that the Celestron SLT, Celestron Prodigy, and SkyWatcher SynScan AZ GOTO mounts all use the same identical lightweight tripod and the same identical way to attach the mount to the tripod.

I have attached my SkyWatcher to my CG5 tripod and that combination is totally vibration free. To do this, I had to remove the CG5's center brace and tray and the bolt that attaches them to the tripod head. I then inserted a bolt that matched the Skyatcher's bolt through the hole in the middle of the CG5 tripod head and screwed it into the base of the SkyWatcher mount. This makes a very super solid combination. The CG5 tripod without the center tray has no problems at all. I use this combination with either my 6 or 8 inch SCT on my SkyWatcher mount (over loaded 50% but works great). warning One thing to be very careful about. If the bolt you use to attach the prodigy mount to the CG5 tripod is too long it can intrude too far into the base of the SLT/Prodigy/SkyWatcher mount and damage the mount. I simply put a nut on the bold on the bottom of the CG5 tripod head to adjust the length of the bolt's intrusion into my mount. In other words, the length of the bolt protruding the CG5 head is the same length of the bold protruding through the Prodigy/SLT/Skywatcher tripod's head.


Another avenue take is to simply alter the Prodigy's tripod to make it more rigid. You can do this with out voiding your warranty. First, tighten up the hex bolts at attach the tripod's leg sockets to the tripod's head. Don't worry, you can still collapse the tripod afterwards. Tighten up all other screws and bolts being careful of the soft plastic materials that Celestron uses on the tripod. The upper tripod legs are attached to their leg sockets by two inline rivets. While the connection looks firm, it isn't. Inject super glue between the upper tripod legs and their upper and lower leg sockets being careful not to get super glue on any moving parts. Move the center brace down 7 to 10 cm (3 to 4 inches) to prevent resonance in the upper legs. note: this will decrease the stability of the tripod slightly but still have a larger foot print than many similar telescope tripods. While all the above will not eliminate the vibration of the tripod, it will lower the amplitude, frequency, and duration of the vibration and make the tripod more useable.

[TonyBegg]

Thanks Sxinias. Great and very informative reply. I am afraid I have definitely voided my warranty since I took the Sky Prodigy mount apart today (as far as I dared). Interestingly I have a CG5GT tripod and I had come to a complementary solution which was to remove the SP tripod legs and modify the tripod bowl top and replicate the plate that the bolt screws into on the underside of the mount, with the CG5GT bolt thread instead. The CG5GT bolt would need to pass through a hole in the SP tripod bowl (and this would need some sort of non-interfering spigot to stop it rotating relative to the CG5GT tripod top plate). And as you say - be careful about the length of the protruding bolt - say using spacers under the tripod head. I think I like your solution best. I would like to see the SP auto align technology on bigger scopes and after my partial dismantle decided one could remove the electronics (there is a main board part no NXW450 rev D) which connects to a self contained camera board with the camera rigidly attached to the board and the board screened with foil, to the handset via a telephone-like jack, and to the two identical motors (SLT-F00-1.11-6-2 for altitude and azimuth) and somehow fathom how to connect the motor connections on the main board to your new heavy duty alt-az motor drive electronics. Need the pin-out and maybe circuit diagram of the NXW450 rev D. Hope I can reassemble it. Thanks again.

[sxinias]

Here are some photos of what I did.

Here is my SkyWatcher AZ GOTO mount on a CG5 tripod with an 8 inch LX200 OTA. Solid as a rock.



Here is the bottom of the SkyWatcher mount



The bolt used to attach the SkyWatcher mount to the CG5 tripod. Note the nut on the bolt adjusts how far the bolt can protrude into the SkyWatcher mount.



Bolt protruding through the head of the CG5 mount ready to screw into the SkyWatcher mount.



Center brace and accessory tray are not used