What is normal?

How much movement, when pressure is applied to the weight shaft, should you see in the RA drive? Is a certain amount of movement or flexure considered normal?
If you have the worm adjusted for best movement without binding or loading of the motor, there would always be a little clearance (very small) on the worm, right? And the mount will flex if pressure is applied to the shaft, correct?
Understand that this is my first GEM and I am learning!
I have been working on my worm adjustment on the LXD650 mount and the motion is now smooth and quiet. It is adjusted as tightly as it can be and still run free without binding somewhere in the complete arc of motion.

Thanks Joe,
So I assume that you will always have some clearance between the worm and the gear to allow for the eccentricity of the gear. Also that there will always be some flexure or torsional movement in any gear drive?

On the side here I read up about the hypertuning thread you all were talking about, you know, that company that does that. What a joke.

I especially liked where at the company site they used the term "high resolution sanding".

Anyway, from the pictures they show it appears your main gear is pressed over the bearing with no adjustment. Is this so?

If you ever take your mount apart, please pm me some pictures of the guts.

I can tell you that taking it apart, removing the grease and metal bits that these manufacturers, some, seem to leave in there is a good first start. There is much better grease. We used a flouro type grease for aviation applications. Better load pressure and less prone to freezing temps.

Aluminum gears ain't the greatest. Wear out quickly, thermal expansion problems, etc. Maybe there are some bronze replacements?

Here's a summary. You appear to have only a choice of adjusting the worm to the main gear and that's it. With this in mind, again, check the end play first. Clean and change the grease. Check the end play of the main shaft bearings. You may have to tighten the end play there as well.

This ain't rocket science. Jason added an extra main shaft bearing to the G11. This helps the load allot. You probably don't have that luxury.

Think of this in steps. First the main shaft bearings. Take them out and degrease them. Apply better grease. Put them back in and tighten them rotating the shaft until you get ball tightness. Back off the adjustment until it feels smooth without any end play. Won't be much.

Then move to the worm assembly.

If you have time, you might want to do some "high resolution sanding" while you're at it. That other site says they can "hype tune" your mount. I would assume this is true.

Thanks James, I will check out your pages.

Nice specimen from another site.

http://www.pbase.com/radhapriya/image/57459522

top view

http://www.pbase.com/radhapriya/image/57459521