Stiction: Physics = “The friction which tends to prevent stationary surfaces from being set in motion”

I have an older Meade “medium duty” equatorial mount.  It’s been a while since I’d last used this mount. Unfortunately, while pointing the telescope, the RA and Declination shafts were “jerky” or sticking, when attempting to hand-move the mount. This is called “stiction.”  

This mount has teflon/nylon split bearings, and over the past 30 years, knowing that a petroleum based lubricant can attack plastics, nylon and teflon, I have disassembled and used paraffin.

It occurred to me to use some Mobil 1 synthetic motor oil in a tiny plastic dropper, might just be the perfect lubrication. 

I removed the counter weights, and flipped the RA and Dec shafts in all angles, and dripped small drops of Mobil 1 synthetic into the RA and declination lock down holes, which would allow permeation of the internal surfaces. 

The Meade Medium Duty mount seems to now work beautifully.

This entry was posted on September 2, 2022 at 2:32 pm and is filed under Roger's Articles. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.