Understand how EZ-touch works!

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This post is rated as PG. Not for the faint-hearted It is the EZtouch (or AYO) mount made by AOK swiss.

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You would notice four 3mm set screws between the az part and the alt part. Remove them.

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The az part is exposed. You will notice the black ring used to push a teflon ring. Remove it! After removing, I realize that the ring is used to preset tension of the AZ part

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That is the teflon ring. Remove it.

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Once the teflon ring is removed, it is like this. The azimuth part can rotate freely using a ball bearing inside. BUT, the bearing can also tilt. So, things can go wrong when you overload the mount by putting a big scope on one side. The az part tilts and the teflon ring will be pushed and deformed!!

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For the alt part, we can remove the side plate to align two scopes to point to the same place.

Unfortunately, the EZ-touch wasn't with me long enough to disassemble the alt part.

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However the project continued with its big brother, AYOdigi. We can see three set screws around the black ring. The black ring is pushing the teflon ring against the golden ring to preset friction in the altitude axis. Remove the set screws. The black ring is threaded to the black core. Unthread the black ring.

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It is like this.

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Ring removed.

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After the black ring and teflon ring are removed, internal parts expose. The AYOdigi has internal encoders. The Alt axis is connected to the encoder by a gear set as seen from the photo.