Euro-EMC S130 rolling pier review
The ultimate wish for many astrophotographers is a permanent observatory. But those who are not in the position to build that, will be forced to solutions where (part of) the rig needs to be built up before each imaging session. Setup, alignment and take-down are time-consuming and often not free of errors. The rig may behave different than expected, even if everything is put together exactly the same as before.
A fellow astrophotographer pointed me to the rolling piers from the company Euro-EMC in Germany. The company’s main activity is in positioning systems for Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) measurements. But they also have a line of astro-related equipment. This includes piers, column tripods, observation chairs, etc. The S130 is a modular column tripod system. It can be fitted out with wheels, making it a rolling pier that can handle fully assembled rigs.
The system
The core of the system consists of a powder coated steel base with three legs, and an aluminium column with a diameter of 130mm. Columns range from 80 to 140cm and have several openings to support cable management. In standard configuration, the base rests on three height adjustable spikes. Optional are broader rubber feet for softer surfaces, and ground-mounted feet designed to be used in a permanent observatory. To fix the mount, an adapter plate is added to the top of the aluminium tube. With 37 available adapters almost all regular mounts are supported. And if not, a custom adapter can be produced.
To convert the column tripod into a rolling pier, there are two options for wheels. One consists of three swivelling wheels, one under each leg, for horizontal movement on a relatively flat surface. The second option consists of two wheels, on the outside of two of the legs. A handlebar is connected to the third arm of the base. This way the rig can be lifted to a tilting position and rolled over rougher surfaces.
The system includes a range of accessories available. Plug points with mains power cord, batteries that fit into the legs, accessory plates, tables for maps, books, eye pieces, etc.
Ordering and unboxing
Because of all the options, it takes a little time to assess what is needed for a given situation. I eventually settled on the following:
Base with standard spikes
Pier 80cm
Swivelling wheels (3)
Air-filled tyres (2)
Handlebar
Plug points with power cord
Small accessory plates (2x)
Adapter for the 10Micron GM1000HPS mount
During the selection process there were several points of contact with Rainer Schäfer, CEO of the company. He always responded quickly, acted professional and was helpful with his advice. It took about 8 weeks for the pier to arrive. A bit longer than expected, due to some delays in the powder coating of the base. During the process I was kept up to date with latests estimates of ETA. When a large and heavy box arrived, the first thing that was noticed was the meticulate way in which everything was packed together. Heavy components were mounted on a sheet of wood, so no part could damage the others.
Assembly instructions were in German. For me no problem. But you may want to keep Google Translate at hand if the German language is less familiar to you. Alternatively you may just want to follow the pictures, which is probably enough.
The packaging offers a lot of protection. Bigger components mounted to a sheet of wood, able to withstand shocks during transport.
The central column is a solid aluminium tube (130mm) with stainless steel mounting plate. Lengths vary from from 80cm to 140cm
Spikes come pre-installed, but wheels and other smaller components need to be assembled.
Assembling
Assembly of the pier is not too complicated. The base requires some add-ons to be put in place. The three swivel wheels cannot be fixed to their rod with standard wrenches, so a flattened ring wrench is included. The two air-filled wheels can be placed at three different positions. Each position will change the angle of tilt when using the wheels. For my setup the lowest position (smallest angle) worked best. The connection for the handlebar as well as the plug points with power cable come pre-installed.
The column slides through two clamping brackets in the base. Each bracket consists of a part that should remain fixed and a part that should be loosened. The latter is indicated with a sticker labeled ‘Open’. Once loosened, the horizontal clamping bolts can be loosened. The column can now slide into the base. The column should stick out at the bottom. How much is dependent on how high you want the mount to be. There is around 10cm of height to play with. If that is not enough a different length column should be used.
I put some books under the column at the desired height. This allowed careful rotation and tightening. Rotating the column correctly is important at this point. It determines the pointing of the mount. You want one leg pointing north for best stability. On the top of the pier is an indication of what will point north, but it is always good to check with your mount temporarily placed on it. Once the pier is positioned correctly, the horizontal clamping bolts can be tightened, followed by the vertical fixing bolts.
One clamp remains fixed while the other, labeled ‘open’, is loosened for the column to slide through.
Horizontal bolts on each side tighten the clamp against the column. Once tight the vertical bolts are tightened.
The column is held in place by two sets of brackets, one on top and one at the bottom of the base.
The North-South orientation on the top plate of the column needs to be aligned with one north-facing leg for optimal stability
There are 37 adapters available to support almost any regular mount on the market. Custom adapters are on request.
Small swivelling wheels for indoor manoeuvring, large air-filled tyres for outside transport and spikes for rock solid positioning
The mount adapters are different for each mount, but they generally follow a similar principle. On the pier a standard thin spacer sheet is placed, followed by the dedicated adapter, then the mount is fixed into this adapter. Spacer and adapter are made of stainless steel, a lot stronger than commonly used aluminium.
I ran into some issues with the 10Micron GM1000HPS adapter. The mount plate required M6 connections in a slightly different geometry than the M8 holes in the adapter-plate. Interestingly the half-pier from 10Micron that I used previouly had both the M6 and M8 holes. Could this be something that has changed over time at 10Micron? Euro-EMC indicated that 15 earlier GM1000 users had no problem with the M8 holes. The problem was solved by drilling the required holes and tap the required threads in the adapter plate. Since I could not use the provided set of screws, it turned out that the screws that I used were just a tad too long, creating somewhat of a wobble in the adapter plate. Drilling just half a millimeter into the pier-base under each of the mounting holes solved the problem. This option was preferred over ordering shorter screws, because the adapter plate is only 5mm thick and you want to use all of that thickness for maximum grip. The mount could now be fitted onto the pier with a clean, robust and solid connection.
The assembled pier, ready to be rigged up.
Rigging up
One of the advantages of a rolling pier setup is that all equipment can remain fixed to it, ready to go. The base and column have plenty of space to attach things and within the S130 system there are several accessories to make rigging up the system a bit easier. These include mounting plates in two sizes, a table (for laptop), eyepiece holder and batteries that fit in the base legs.
In my original order there were two mounting plates (small version). These are flat panels connected with two cables precisely gripping around the column. Equipment rests on a little ridge at the bottom. More ridges can be purchased separately. The equipment is kept in place using velcro that attaches to a nifty hidden strip of velcro at the back of the plate. Velcro, cable binders and anti-slip rubber are all included for easy montage. The mounting plates were an ideal match for the mount control box. The power supply unit however was a bit too large and not a great match. I ended up making a custom 3D printed bracket for them. For smaller items, a quick and effective method is to just use velcro wraps and some of the supplied anti-slip rubber.
When you attach equipment on both sides of the column, the mounting plates can get in the way of the cables/tie wraps. It all depends on how much stuff you want to hang on it, and it can be a bit of a puzzle of what goes where best. Not everything has to go on the column. One of my power-bricks fitted nicely in a leg. For optimal mounting, the 3D printer was very helpful to tidy things up. Several mounting brackets were made out of PETG filament and strapped to the column using velcro and tie wraps.
Wiring is made easy by several large openings in the column. Cables can run out of sight and excess cable can be hidden in the column. The outlets at the bottom of the base offer space for four plugs. Further adapters are supplied to extend to six, assuming the use of flat euro-connectors. Just one power cable runs from the rig to an extension cord in the garden, to power up the whole setup.
One of two power supplies and MacMini, attached using some 3D printed brackets
It can get rather busy and requires some trial and error to fit everything on.
Smaller components can be placed in the legs, such as this power brick.
Large openings in the column help a lot with the cable management.
An accessory plate, just a bit too small for this power supply.
The anti-slip rubber mat, together with some velcro straps work well for smaller items.
Roll-in, Roll-out
The moment of truth is here, how will the roll-in, roll-out method work in the real world? For indoor manoeuvring the three swivelling wheels appeared to be very effective. The legs are too wide for most door posts, but you can roll one leg through, then pivot around the doorpost and move the others through.
To roll the rig outside, a door threshold had to be passed. For a light setup taking the obstacle directly might work. But for most setups some kind of ramp is required. I built a custom ramp for an optimal fit. A local metal workshop made a custom stainless steel profile. This was fitted to a 15mm thick HPL panel. According to the website, a 15mm thick panel would bend only 4-8 mm under a 100kg load. The panel was covered with anti-slip tape to prevent any slippery of wheels or feet after a dewy night.
Tilting the rig using the long handlebar was much less scary than anticipated. There is a good sense of control and the weight does not feel heavy, also because the arms of the handlebar is rather long. The ramp was fairly easy to pass and the anti-slip tape gave good grip on the slope. Once outside on the terrace, the air-filled rubber wheels provide a nice amount of damping while still rolling smoothly. The heavier the rig, the more the floor will need to be even though. If you want to use the two wheel setup with handle bar, make sure you order it from the start. The handlebar requires some modifications to the base that can not be done as a later add-on.
The whole process of getting the fully built rig out onto its observation location takes about 5 minutes. That is a major time saver compared to the at least 30 minutes it took previously.
A solid pass-through for the handle bar in the top-part of the leg.
A custom made stainless steel profile was fitted to a sheet of 15mm thick HPL.
The handle bar clicks in place. Pulling the pin out releases the bar. No tools required.
Covered in anti-slip tape, the ramp offers a smooth transition over the threshold.
The handle bar provides surprisingly good stability when the rig is tilted.
A one meter wide solid ramp for the rig to be rolled outside.
Align
The first time, the rig has to be roughly aligned towards the north. Once done, the spikes are lowered onto the ground. The mount can now be properly levelled. There is a spirit level in the base, but I’m not using that one. My preference is to level where it matters: at the mount. A small sensitive spirit level alternating in positions of the three legs does the job. Adjustments can be done very precisely by turning the spikes in or out. To have the whole rig resting on just three spikes may not sound very stable, but in fact it is rock-solid. Once at the right height, the spike is secured with an extra clamp which eliminates any chance of movement. My terrace has tiles which work fine with the spikes as is. For softer surfaces Euro-EMC offers disks that the spikes can stand on.
Once in position, a regular polar alignment is required, at least the first time. After the first session, I marked the location of the spikes and drilled a little dimple in the tiles so that next time the mount would be in exactly the same place. As it turns out, this works so well, that most of the time no polar alignment is needed anymore. Any slight misalignment is well within the limits of what the pointing model of the 10Micron mount can handle. For mounts that don’t work with such pointing models, a slight adjustment of the polar alignment may be necessary each time, but only to fine-tune and perhaps just good guiding would be sufficient.
The process of levelling, turning it all on and check of the polar alignment may take another 5 minutes. Compared to the 15 minutes or so this took previously, again a major time saver.
Use
The Euro-EMC S130 pier provides a rock-solid support for my mount. Overall the impression was that RMS values were more predictable and may even have come down a bit. Pointing accuracy seems improved. And above all, the stability between sessions on successive days is much better. Given the fact that it is a pier and not a tripod, there is very little chance that the filter wheel will hit the pier, which gives piece of mind.
For a long time, my assumption was that the ideal setup would be a flexible setup, where everything could be exchanged with anything. In reality though, this approach increases the risk of errors. So over time I’ve been more and more drawn toward a fixed setup. The S130 system provides a great platform to achieve this.
Rolling the system in and out the house is a straightforward task. The two-wheel system provides a lot of flexibility. The concept of tilting and manoeuvring the rig on two wheels using the long handlebar is a smart, compact solution and provides a lot more stability than one might think.
The time gained in setting up and breaking down the system each session is significant. But as important is the fact that overall imaging time has gone up. Earlier, when there was a spill of clear skies in the forecast, it was not worth the effort of setting the whole system up. But now, on such a night I would much more likely roll out the system and see how many hours it can be used.
The first rig is ready.
Conclusion
The Euro-EMC S130 rolling pier system has been one of the best additions to the observatory in a long time. The build quality, machining, materials, packaging etc is excellent. The two wheel options provide great flexibility for both indoor and outdoor manoeuvring, assuming you have a somewhat flat surface to deal with. The mounting possibilities of accessories on the pier are more than sufficient for most situations. And the stability and minimal session-to-session variability make it a joy to use. Having a fixed rig to roll out takes a lot of hassle out of the equation, ultimately resulting in more observation time.
The only disadvantage may be the price. For a fairly complete setup the total price will be just over € 3,000.-. That is a lot more than my very sturdy Berlebach Planet tripod and certainly not within everyones reach. But if you can afford it, this is money very well spent.
The bigger picture is that I have been searching for a large aperture, long FL telescope as a second parallel rig. These instruments can be very heavy and not typically considered ‘mobile’. A permanent observatory was not an option and the rolling pier concept opened the way to proceed with such a telescope. While waiting for the big scope to arrive, the pier was first used with my regular setup. This was so successful that it was hard to imagine going back to the former setup, so I decided to buy a second pier. One getting ready for when the big scope arrives, and one as a second rig with one of my two refractors.
In the meantime the mount for the big scope arrived. It is a 10Micron GM2000HPS, the bigger brother of the GM1000HPS. It was setup in a similar way, just with bigger adapters, two power supplies, etc. I’ve gone all in on the Roll-in, Roll-out concept and while still waiting for the big scope to be installed, each carries now one of my refractors.
Two rigs fully operational as roll-in, roll-out setup. The rig at the front is still waiting for a large aperture scope, for which the whole rolling pier was originally designed.
Disclaimer: This review describes my own independent personal opinion of the Euro-EMC S130 rolling pier system, after using it for several months. Both S130’s were purchased with my own money at the regular commercial price, for my own personal use. This review was written for my own website for no other benefit than sharing my experiences with the community. The manufacturer has not been aware of and/or involved in this review in any way, other than that I sent him a link after this review was published.