Meade DS/ETX Gears and Repair Parts

thingiverse

Hello, I bought a 2nd hand Meade Telescope with a DS goto mount, the Azimuth was not working, just grinding initially, then worse. Two gears were bad, the 42T gear that drives the worm gear and the 30T12T gear that drives that. Also both the hinges snapped off the motor mount. I did not think printing out the gears would work because the gears are quite fine, surprisingly it seems to be working okay from a FDM printer with 0.4mm nozzle. For the gears just after printing check each tooth and clean any excess material. The gears fit perfectly (first go!) (meshing and onto shaft) for me, the 42T on the worm gear shaft I pressed fit onto the spines without glue, I made the part that goes over the shaft spline thicker for strength. For the motor mount repair, I super glued the broken hinge pieces back, I do no think it would of been strong enough with just glue, I created two braces, that sort of hold the hinge to the motor mount, so if they snapped off again, at least the braces will hold them into position and should continue working, otherwise the whole motor assembly would just drop. Note the centre brace does go on crooked, so it does not interfere with worm gear. The gears were created with SCAD and then edited in Tinkercad. If there is another gear needed with a different tooth count, please let me know. I hope this helps someone.