ZWO announced its harmonic drive mount AM5

[akdwivedi]

https://astronomy-imaging-camera.com/pr ... rial-mount

What do you guys think.. their QC is a little questionable, but if it works like the RST 135, it would be fantastic at almost half the price of RST135.. and it goes down to Singapore latitude.

[akdwivedi]

and pegasus astro announced their own - https://www.facebook.com/plugins/post.p ... _text=true

[orly_andico]

This is likely to be cheaper because it uses the Chinese knockoff wave drives (and not the Made-in-Japan Harmonic Drive Systems drive).

The Chinese knockoff drives are less than half the cost of the genuine HDS article.

But seeing that all wave drives have massive periodic error (even the HDS ones), maybe the Chinese knockoffs are good enough.

[akdwivedi]

yes.. and they will improve over time.. almost all the mass market mounts today - skywatcher, celestron, ioptron are made in china. I guess even the ones which are not made in China - losmandy, paramount, 10micron must be sourcing their parts from china (% may vary)..

I am not too concerned about made in china/korea/japan/swiss, but more about the QA. Sharpstar mounts have started shipping, though they dont go down to 0 deg,, zwo, pegasus etc will start shipping in April 2022.. so there would be options for consumers.

a lightweight mount without counterweights will be nice.. even though enuthusiasts which require more accuracy will continue to have permanent setups with other mounts with lesser PE and better accuracy.

[akdwivedi]

sharpstar announced mark 1 weighing just 2.5Kg.. it would be a killer if it can handle 10kg payload without counterweight and work in low latitudes.