Setting up a Moteck H180 GTP-1800AM 36V HH motor.

[Llew]

Yeuk! I think my motor's bust! Late last night trying to go west from my extreme east satellite, I was looking at my spectrum analyser and noticed that the usual passing through the arc show of satellites weren't appearing on the screen.

The Echostar positioner East - West moving pointer display on the TV screen was moving West as normal, indicating that the positioner was receiving pulses, but looking outside at the dish, it hadn't moved.

This presented me with a dilemma - I needed it to carry on trying to move the dish West, but the positioner was now at its extreme West limit. So I reversed the motor connections to try to move the dish West from its obviously stuck East position.

Rushing outside whilst the positioner tried to move it off East (West to East as regards the positioner, but of course with the motor wires reversed), I was just in time to hear a horrible bang-bang-banging noise coming from the motor as it tried to move the dish.

So it, seems like the motor's given up the ghost. Nothing for it now but for me to disassemble the dish and motor to try and find out the cause 'O'

 

[Mickha]

I'm sorry to hear that Llew.
Good luck in finding the fault, and hopefully you'll get some decent weather, or at least it will stop raining.
The old Jaeger 1224 had hardware limits, you could set, just in case anything went wrong with the positioner, I can't recall seeing them in the moteck, but then as I have it on a ground mount, with no obstacles, for the dish to hit, I didn't check if it had them or if they were set.

 

[Llew]

I couldn't see any limit adjustments either, or reference on to how to set them in the instructions. In any case, I have software limiting in the Echostar, well inside the supposed 180 degree limits of the Moteck.

I've taken the Echostar down to the shack under the dish, and tried to manually move the dish whilst the positioner was in operation, but it doesn't budge.

Looks like I'm going to have to set it up on the polar mount if I can't find the cause of the problem.

 

[Mickha]

Hopefully it's something easy to repair. Do these motors have any manufacturers warranty?

 

[Llew]

There is a two years' warranty according to the product description on the Sateuropa site where I bought it. Once it's down I'll check first to see if it's an obvious problem, otherwise I'll contact them for further advice.

 

[Huevos]

Any news on what is wrong with the motor?

 

[Llew]

I have it on the bench and have visually inspected for obvious problems like gear teeth out of mesh or loose/stuck gearwheels, but until I connect power to it I can't investigate further. At present I'm concentrating on getting the dish set up with a polar mount.

 

[wod]

Could be that the motor has blown maybe.

the gibby polar mount should still be decent though with a long enough actuator 24inch ?

Llew, have you still kept your smw dish ?

 

[Llew]

Could be that the motor has blown maybe.

the gibby polar mount should still be decent though with a long enough actuator 24inch ?

Llew, have you still kept your smw dish ?

Motor must have been running freely, as feedback pulses were being recognised by the positioner. Also the knocking noise only ceased when I disconnected the power.

I can't use the Gibby polar mount at present as it will extend too far forward from the pole, meaning the dish LNB arm will reach over my neighbour's property. Only moving the pole back a foot or so will allow me to use it (lack of forward thinking on my part alas, I didn't realise how big the polar mount was). A job for another day.

Meanwhile, I'm hoping to use the much more compact SMW polar mount; measurements and any necessary modifications pending.

The SMW dish will most likely replace one of my older dishes.

 

[digi247]

Hi All,


Been a while since this thread was updated and my problem persisted with the Moteck H180, Not my fault 100% as i have done polar mounts previously but this one beat me completely and i can only put it down to how its been manufactured as it has been said many times in this thread. So i took it down and ordered the official Gibertini 1.2m Polar mount and an 18" actuator and can now finally track the ARC how it should be never did anything to my pole mount as it was spot on level on all sides to start.


All i can say is i wish now i had gone with the Gibby polar mount in the first place, Took me a few hours while i dismantled the Moteck from the dish and gave all the nuts & bolts a thorough cleaning and a liberal coating of silicone grease before i remounted with the Gibby Polar mount and 18" actuator in place, It actually took me longer to clean and grease everything than it did to set the polar mount up and fine tune the ARC which was done in minutes rather than Days like the Moteck H180.


Anyway all done now and finally got my ARC back and signal levels as what was expected from 57° east to 45° west.

 

[Llew]

Nice install digi. That's what I intend to do when I move my pole back to clear neighbour's. Meanwhile, the SMW mount I'm using is fine until then - my actuator is on the other side to yours, so I get 45E - 58W. Any further east and the dish dumps - actuator pivot on the mount needed to be a bit further away from the mount I think, but it'll do until I reinstall with the Gibby mount.

Motek still on the bench - it's jammed solid, and I want to find out the reason before I send it back.

 

[wod]

Looking good digi247, hope your pole is very solid as that setup is very exposed to winds.

It's just a shame the jaeger smr 1224 is discontinued as that would have made it more compact.

 

[digi247]

Looking good digi247, hope your pole is very solid as that setup is very exposed to winds.

It's just a shame the jaeger smr 1224 is discontinued as that would have made it more compact.

Hi wod,

Its solid even in some heavy winds i do get a slight vibration in heavy winds but nothing that effects signal quality, its on a 76mm x 3mm thick Galvanised steel pole pretty much the same as a scaffold pole but 3" instead of 2, The pole weighs heavier than the dish and the mount combined LOL.

I agree with the 1224 that would have been a better option that's why i opted for the 1224 look a like Moteck H180 never mind you live and learn

 

[aceb]

Bit of an update now the motor has been up three months and before we go into the winter weather. I've recently added inclination control to the dish by adding a small actuator at the bottom, it started as an 8" but that snagged the main pole so 3" was cut off to allow some clearance behind the casing. The original CM mounting holes on the adapter plate were used to fix a length of angle down to the actuator and that is fixed through one of the LNB boom fixing bolts to the side of the dish. The fine tuning adjuster was removed completely and the nuts holding the elevation control slackened enough to allow it to slide up and down, I've also added some Locktite to stop them falling off.

Drive is via a 10A PSU that I've screwed down to 8V meaning the movement is quite slow and I've used a non latching DPDT switch to control it. I chose non latching as an additional safeguard to setting the mechanical limit switches on the actuator, so there's no likelyhood of powering it by accident and driving the dish too far. All I need now are some inclined targets although being able to fine tune the extremes like 63W and 68.5E has helped gain a couple of points of Q (and saved more time on the roof).

As for the Moteck, all seems OK still although I did notice some play start to appear in it a few weeks ago. This was quickly diagnosed to the screws holding the block at the end of the drive shaft slackening off. I'm not sure if these should be torqued to a certain value similar to the backlash control on a diseqc motor but I've tightened them up to a point where there is no play in the dish and the motor is still free to move.

 

[moonbase]

It's not adding weight at least not from the point of view of the motor. Anyway when I added declination control to my Fibo the shortest actuator I could get was an 8" (76 pulses per inch). That was too long to fit so I just cut a bit off it.

BTW if you add an actuator in there it is not declination control at all, but a mixture of elevation control and skew. When you get near the horizon you would be adjusting is skew only, and not elevation. My mod adjusted declination only, and not skew, and works properly right across the arc. If I set it to 5º below, it will be 5º below on all satellites irrespective of which part of the arc the dish is pointing at, and that is not the case if you add an actuator to the back of the Moteck.

http://www.satellites.co.uk/forums/pictures-members-setups-general-satellite-installations/190994-adding-declination-control-fibo-90-a-2.html#post984337

Huevos,

Would you be able to post any pictures of your declination control modification on the Motek H180 please? I am getting an error message when trying to view the original topic using the link above

 

[moonbase]

...I've recently added inclination control to the dish by adding a small actuator at the bottom,

Drive is via a 10A PSU that I've screwed down to 8V meaning the movement is quite slow and I've used a non latching DPDT switch to control it. I chose non latching as an additional safeguard to setting the mechanical limit switches on the actuator, so there's no likelyhood of powering it by accident and driving the dish too far.

aceb,

Have you any idea about how fine the inclination control is with the 10A PSU that you used. For example, pulses per degree, or pulses per mm of actuator?


Rgds

 

[Huevos]

Would you be able to post any pictures of your declination control modification on the Motek H180 please?

I don't have a Motek motor. My declination control is on my Fibo90, on a DiSEqC motor.

 

[Captain Jack]

Moonbase, check Vipersan's threads - he has elevation control (or declination - can't recall which)

 

[moonbase]

Moonbase, check Vipersan's threads - he has elevation control (or declination - can't recall which)

CJ,

OK, will do, however, he has a lot of threads :-)

Thx

 

[moonbase]

Hi,

Would anyone please know if the build quality of the Motek H180 motor has improved since this topic was started a while back by "aceb". I think there were some build quality issues with the 1st motor purchased in the topic whereby the top and bottom plates were out of alignment, I just wondered if there were any recent purchasers of the motors and what they thought of the build quality?

Rgds