When you attach the focuser just pull the mirror back and forth. It should slide very smoothly. If you cannot pull the mirror through its entire range and do so very smoothly, you have other issues.
When you have the focuser in hand and turn it, it should be very smooth. If both of these tests work then it is your alignment of the focuser. Perhaps your observations have turned up another flaw but the alignment is critical.
Gary
Carpe Noctem
Sent From My LG-V10 Phone
On Wed, Aug 2, 2017 at 4:10 PM -0700, "gdunham@... [C14_EdgeHD]"
<C14_EdgeHD@...> wrote:
?
Worked with the focuser this afternoon.? I isolated a single problem.? The brass nut that turns on the mirror focus rod was binding at the outer edge of the thread.? Visual inspection under magnification shows not burs or cross threading.? It may be that it is engineered to have a tight end. ? I would like to put it on a tap but in the mean time I smoothed and polished the threads.? I put it back together and found that it turns a bit easier.? My final step of screwing in the 3 screws.? I did find that no matter how I tightened them, the focuser became bound.? I ended up tightening just to take out "slack".? Seems OK.? I am anticipating that there may be problems when the mirror is at a bottom position.? I will not really know if the problem is solved until I have a star to focus on.?
Thanks for the heads up on the mounting plate screw issue...it is a very sensitive and requires great care to get right.? I am not sure it should be like this and plan on contacting StarLight instruments and talk about my installation.
