AM5 guiding issue, random RA instabilities: Page 6

AM5 guiding issue, random RA instabilities

Support@Seestar

KHj89YaN
Thank you for your concern and for raising these questions. We have confirmed a solution for the issue.
Since this problem is not widespread and only affects a small number of customers, it is caused by an assembly-related issue. At present, the recommended solution is that if a mount exhibits this problem, the customer can contact us directly and send the mount to us for repair and reassembly.
Please rest assured and do not worry, as affected units can be handled promptly through this process.

F5146666

Support@Seestar

Alright, then let's go through this.

I had this issue in April this year and put a lot effort myself in this investigation to find the root cause (operation with removed covers, swapping of drives, run in procedures, etc.). Finding out that the RA harmonic drive seems to be the root cause with very high probability, I created a workaround for this issue (spinn the RA drive with a power drill). I send a couple of log files to you with the response that everything seems fine again for now.

Now I am standing here considering your reply without having received a feedback from you regarding a confirmed root cause.

Is my workaround considered as permanent solution from ZWO?
Is it likely that the RA-spike issue is showing up again after some time (maybe temperature dependent)?
Do I therefore need to return my mount to ZWO for a repair, even if it does not show up any issues after applying my workaround routine?

Gentleman, you final response to this issue is not acceptable.

I am not going to send my mount to you for a repair, not knowing what is being done in the factory and why it is being done. This the level of transparency and trust that I would expect as a customer.

Consider your response wisely, otherwise this was my first and last product from ZWO.

3t2To05L

Support@Seestar
For European customers, should the mounts be sent to the technical service in France or directly to China?

You say: “... as affected units can be handled promptly through this process”. How many weeks are we talking about: 2, 8, 16, ...?

I think ZWO should be more proactive in solving this problem and clearly define the procedure to follow with mounts that have this issue.

KHj89YaN

Support@Seestar

Thanks for the response, however; ZWO's conclusions don't really make a lot of sense. Based on ZWO's response, I have several questions:

How has ZWO determined that this fault isn't widespread when it's apparently an assembly caused issue?
Does ZWO know exactly how many serial numbers were affected during this change in assembly?
Did ZWO look at performance tests for each individual AM5N and determine that some should not have been released due to not meeting quality standards?

I have been repeatedly told by ZWO that it was a "random" issue, but your answer would counter that in that it's a known assembly related issue which is directly attached to production and quality control of your product. ZWO has claimed that there aren't batches of defective mounts, so the only conclusion based on ZWO's forementioned claim is that the quality control at ZWO for the AM5N has failed. Defective mounts have been allowed to leak into the population--pretty straight forward.

Either way, the response ZWO should be taking is notifying all customers and vendors that these mounts are defective and offer a real remedy--not the one being offered here where the customer has to initiate the remedy. There is no way a customer can trust that a repaired and reassembled mount at the ZWO will be done correctly since ZWO claims that issue is random, but it's also an isolated assembly incident. That seems contradictory.

Support@Seestar

Thank you for your detailed feedback. We understand your concerns and appreciate your attention to product quality.
We have identified the cause of the issue and have a solution ready for affected units. This problem is not widespread, so not all units are impacted. For units that function properly, proactive contact or recall is not necessary.
Please rest assured that whenever a customer experiences a problem, we act immediately. If a unit cannot be used, the customer can contact us, provide the relevant logs, and we will confirm and resolve the issue as quickly as possible.
We hope you understand our approach. We are committed to timely and effective support for any affected units.

ppurbano

Support@Seestar

That's great, they've identified the problem and have a solution. But when will it be available? What do we have to do? I haven't been able to use my mount since May. I sent it back to the store in Spain where I bought it, and they told me they had to send it to Germany. After two months, they returned it to me saying it was fine and there was no fault. Please, a little professionalism. This equipment costs a lot of money, and we shouldn't be treated this way.

F5146666

Support@Seestar
@Sam@ZWO

I followed up on my RMA-/Support-E-Mail conversion (two times) and asked for the way forward, as I am affected by the RA-spike issue. For the last 2 weeks you kept ignoring me.

Is this the immediate support you are talking about?

KHj89YaN

[unknown]

There are now several posts on the different astronomy forums that detail exchanges that users have had with the U.S.A. ZWO Repairs team in New Jersey and these posts state that U.S.A. ZWO Repair Technicians are replacing entire RA Motor Assemblies due to improper lubrication. Per these posts, the U.S.A. ZWO team stated that this is a known problem to ZWO as it was determined that ZWO was using faulty RA Motor Assemblies that were provided by one of the two vendors that is contracted with ZWO. The U.S.A. ZWO team also said that ZWO has stopped using that vendor (not sure how they were able to determine this). Yet, no where, not on this site or on ZWO's main site is there anything mentioned about this. This is another mark against how ZWO has handled this issue, now going on for months. It should have been disclosed on the ZWO main site or some other medium, not from reading posts on forums.

F5146666

KHj89YaN

Thank you for sharing this information. Confirms what I had assumed right from the beginning. But I still do not know if they are using a wave spring washer in the harmonic drive or not. I would just be interested to know.

ASIMount-ZWO

KHj89YaN
Thank you for your suggestion. This is the official forum. We welcome users to discuss the product topics of zwo here. If you encountered this problem, also may submit the RMA information to the website (https://support.zwoastro.com/). If you have submitted but have not yet received feedback from our technical team, please provide your RMA work order number so that we can verify the situation.
Once confirmed, we will prioritize your case and handle it as soon as possible. Thank you very much for your understanding and patience.

ASIMount-ZWO

F5146666
If you have submitted but have not yet received feedback from our technical team, please provide your RMA work order number so that we can verify the situation.
Once confirmed, we will prioritize your case and handle it as soon as possible.
Thank you very much for your understanding and patience.

F5146666

ASIMount-ZWO

I did not receive a RMA-Number from you and/or your team so far. We had conversations over the support- and RMA-E-Mail addresses only for now where I provided my investigation results and shared many PHD2 log files.

So how do we proceed now?

ASIMount-ZWO

F5146666
Sorry, I have contacted the support team and they are working hard to reply to all users' questions. Please send an email to my mailbox (henry.pang@zwoastro.com) and provide your email address so that the support team can handle your issue first.

SVI

Another client affected by the strange behaviour of the AM5N. I bought it on october 24. Due to the bad weather I didn´t use extensively but I was happy. Guide under 0.7" always. 9 Kg of setup. Suddenly on august 25 it started with strange deviations of the guiding. Initially I tought about cables, wind or whatever that could cause this erratic movement mainly in RA. Nevertheless the cause was not that. After 4 sessions struggling with the guiding I gave up and discovered that other owners have the same problem. I contacted to my dealer and he contacted also to the French distributor. After several phone calls, sending to them logs from PHD2 (I use NINA) videos and all the documentation I collected the answer was to send it from Spain to France. My dealer did it in october. Finally the french dealer decided to send it to China after reviewing it. Since then I have no communication.

It's really a shame. Something that doesn't work as expected and under EU Warraty should be fixed as soon as possible or a new one has to be sent. But nothing than barriers and silence.

I'm pushing my spanish dealer to fight for it and obtain a new one. A more than 2000€ mount deserves a better customer support. I'm really annoyed and thinking why I didnt buy a Nyx or Wave or any other mount than ZWO.

It's a very good mount ...when it works. So my advice is look for a mount for which you have a good customer support. ZWO is a mesh.

13FPRWWq

I also ran into the same problem. I bought the mount last December, it has been working well, guiding consistently around 0.5".

It started acting up on early October. The local dealer sent it back to China for repair over a month, ago and no reply on any timeline yet from ZWO...

SVI

I’ve been told by my local dealer that there are a delay in China for reviewing the mounts probably because of the number of defective units. This is unbelievable

KHj89YaN

SVI

I'm sorry to hear this. I was anticipating when this sort of backlog would begin to occur and it seems to have taken about 3 months. A general failure on all levels really from ZWO.

13FPRWWq

Got the update today, that they will have to replace the mother board and the RA harmonic drive on my mount. However one component is out of stock, so still no timeline

A51O69EE

I think that at this point it's more than clear that ZWO won't release any official statement to prevent market panic and massive loss from Christmas purchases. They'll try to mitigate the damage individually by torturing customers who paid 3k USD for their product to provide all the details about their imaging setup, including GPS coordinates of their location and whatnot, so the ZWO can be sure that you just didn't become a complete noob overnight. It's been said before, but the best way possible would be to release an official statement > clearly define the problem > describe its symptoms > provide a checklist for diagnosing your mount for such a problem > provide guidelines for solving the problem > contact or inform retailers about the problem > and facilitate repairs & replacements.

3t2To05L

@ASIMount-ZWO
A51O69EE
That would be the case if ZWO were a serious company, but in the months that have passed, it has been proven that it is anything but serious and incapable of adequately serving its customers.
I think we are too nice and are taking too long to start a serious campaign on social media denouncing this company.
As long as it doesn't hurt them, they will ignore us all.

KHj89YaN

3t2To05L

That probably would require a class action lawsuit or something of the like to be honest. ZWO clearly is not interested in actually remedying the issue since it's likely problem mounts are spread all over the place. It seems that ZWO was able to identify that one of its vendors had faulty RA assemblies, but they do not know which units had these problem assemblies installed. I have always thought that the lack of requesting your mount's serial number when setting up an RMA or discussing this RA problem was odd. The lack of this granular detail seems to show that ZWO didn't track what specific part/module/assembly went where and where it came from--resulting in the ramshackle approach to trying to "fix" the issue.

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