How I finally got to decent performance is a mystery because I was trying many things at once. I'm pretty sure replacing the one motor is what fixed it, but I haven't been motivated to mount the suspect motor again to confirm this.
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So far as the top of the tripod goes, I machined a round surface and coated it with just a touch of crystalline wax. Not a lubricant but just a mild protectant. I'd rather have solid metal contact there to be honest. A turntable would be fancy, but not necessary and just more moving parts that might have play in them.
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The mount continues to behave well with the ASIAir, so simple setup. I've been shooting very wide mosaics of the milky way and just want to spend 20 minutes setting up, then let it run for the night. Shooting with a 50mm Zeiss macro lens. I also use a 100mm. These lenses produce very clean, very flat images, surprisingly so. This is a 100% crop of Deneb shot at 100mm, ASI2600MC. Reminds of stars through mirrored telescopes.
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Ed Harp