The aluminum cylinder at the right is the declination axis, with the counterweights out of the photo to the right.

This entire assembly is enclosed with a clear plexiglass cover in operation (removed for these photos) to maintain a dust free environment for the gear assemblies.

The drive motor is the black box at the right, and is a 500-step per revolution stepper motor.

Connecting the stepper motor to the worm gear is a large-diameter stainless steel flexible coupling, seen at the lower center, with helical grooves cut around it's circumference. This coupling helps relieve potential strain caused by minor misalignment between the motor and worm gear, also helps to dampen any impulses caused by the stepper motor action.

The large black wire coming out of the RA axis is from the Dec drive motor, and is routed through the RA and Dec axes, coming out behind the brass drive gear in the above photos.

The RA drive motor (lower right) is the same as the Dec drive motor, except that it has a 50:1 reducing gearhead. This was a substitution I made to eliminate a residual "wobble" in high-power views of solar-system objects caused by an inherent short-period error in all micro-stepped stepper motors. In this telescope, this "wobble" amounted to about 1 arc-second, with a frequency of about 3 times per second. While this is less than the average seeing limit, the effect in a 1/2" eyepiece at 500 power was quite noticeable.