With the beginning of this year I decided to upgrade my 10" Newton, as I noticed
different issues with the original setup.
The original focuser showed noticable slip when it was moved by the focus motor.
Therefor the mechanism had to be tightened quite strong in order to achieve a
proper focus. Unfortunatel this wore out the gears of the ZWO EAF over time, so it
developed excessive play and didn't keep the focus precisely.
Also the original steel tube led to noticable change in focus throughout the night, when
the temperature changed. The original steel clamps also weren't as rigid as I liked
them to be.
I ordered a custom build carbon tube from Klaus Helmerich (
www.klaushelmi.de), that
was build according to my requirements (Thanks for that, it's awesome !).
As a new focuser I picked the 3" Crayford UNCN3M82 with the according base plate from
TS-Optics and their machined aluminum clamps for the tube (
www.teleskop-express.de).
The UNCN3M82 focuser in combination with the new Primaluce Lab Sesto Senso 2 does
an amazing job and, as it's attached to the micro adjustment axis, is much more precise
than the EAF. I also like that it is using a servo motor instead of a regular motor combined
with gears, as the EAF does.
My recent two images (IC1396 and NGC7822) showed that it was the right decision, as the
stars even in the raw frames were absolutely to the point.
The focusing process is working absolutely reliable without showing any slipping, as with
the original focuser. Great thing about the Sesto Senso 2 is, that it has a lot of parameters
that can be set individually, according to ones preferences.
Hope this might be helpful for someone or at least interesting.
CS,
Michael
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