Ipotron mounts

Has anyone tried the mini tower pro.I would love to hear your opinion on this mount.How big of an OTA can it handle.
Barry J

Barry I can not respond directly to your question as I have no experience with Ioptron
products. However, I was out looking for a goto mount and was doing some research as I
was interested in this mount too. The reports I found on various forums and websites
have been mixed, some good, some not so good, some just bad. A few of the reports were
a year or two old, so with all due respect to Ioptron perhaps those issues have been
resolved. In the end I chickened out (no guts) and bought a new GEM Sirius mount from
Orion. It's a long running product and I have had good luck with the products and service
from Orion. Your call.

Regards,
Tom

Barry I have a Cube pro works good with an 85 mm scope 102 is do able also there service is excellent was almost out of warranty for a dec issue and was taken care of free. There service is great the minitower pro is a very good mount with a higher payload. HTH
Pete

Cant speak on the Pro series....but I have a standard minitower thats around 4 yrs old.....Have had two issues with it, the clutch design on the altitude is a little less than great, because of the knob design it is difficult to lock down enough. I drilled and tapped three equidistant holes around its circumference and installed some posts. That cured that.....The 2nd was the alititude motor gave up the ghost a while back out of warrenty....Here is where Ioptron shines for me....Their customer service was EXCELLENT and the replacement was relatively inexpensive, about $50 as I recall....

barry jaquith said:

Has anyone tried the mini tower pro.I would love to hear your opinion on this mount.How big of an OTA can it handle.
Barry J

Sorry to be late responding to this thread. I've had the MTPro for over a year now and ended up selling my Sphinx SXW. (I prefer the alt-az viewing position.) I use the Vixen VMC260L and my total payload is 28lbs. I've found that balancing is the most critical component. I use the supplied 10 lb and another Celestron 11 lb counterweight. Balance must be done after the scope and counterweight are attached. The other night my goto's were putting my target in the center half of a 14mm ES100 eyepiece with a one-star alignment -- that's over 200x -- throughout the entire sky. Other times when my scope/tripod balance was slightly less than desireable, the target could be seen in my 20mm ES100 eyepiece. Tracking is excellent. I've never really had success with 2-star alignment. If ever the target is not in the eyepiece (most likely due to a less accurate balancing issue using a bubble level) I can just do a 1-star alignment somewhere in the region of the sky near the target.