Fitting Lakeside Focuser to a Moonlite CR2 (Newt)

[Uplooker]

Hello All,

I am interested to know if anyone has fitted a Lakeside Focuser to a Newtonian Moonlite CR2. Have tried with the appropriate fitting kit. However I have found that the circular ring that the single speed knob fits to prevents me. This may be because the mounting bracket is too short or the seems too long. I could solve this by removing the circular ring that the single speed knob fits to. Unfortunately I do not yet know how it is attached to the main body of the Moonlite, there are no attachment grub screws. I suspect that it screws to the main Moonlite body.

Before I attack it with a strap wrench, can anyone confirm this.

The couple is 15.73mm O.D. and the hole in the silver ring is 15.36, preventing the coupler from fitting inside the "hole". This would possibly give me enough leeway to fit the bracket. The other alternative is to shorten the coupler.

Hope fully these picture may portray my problem better.

 

[StevieDvd]

Have you checked whether the kit comes in 2 versions, one for a moonlite with clutch and one without. I had similar issues fitting a moonlight motor and supplied bracket, puzzled me when the bracket would not fit and I even considered that I had to remove the clutch part. Then I found there were 4 versions of the bracket, doh!

 

[Uplooker]

Hi Stevie,

Thanks for the reply. Having read your response and based on speaking to someone who had read my post, but not responded, seem to have the impression that I am trying to fit a Moonlite motorised focus motor to Moonlight focuser (thats a bit confusing)

Lets try again. I am try to fit one of these:- http://www.lakeside-astro.com/

to one of these:-https://www.firstlightoptics.com/moonlite-focusers/moonlite-cr-dual-rate-tri-knob-crayford-focuser-for-newtonians.html

The silver ring that I refer to in my SGL post is actually part of the Moonlite. It constitutes the focuser lock mechanism. It adds at least 10mm and means that I am unable to move the attachment bracket for the Lakeside motor focuser close enough to the Moonlite to bolt it in place. Is it possible to remove the silver ring from the Moonlite focuser? The silver ring being the part that the "screw" is used to lock the focus position.

[Davey-T]

Try dropping Peter at Lakeside an email, he usually responds pretty quickly.

You shouldn't need a lock as the motor will stop it turning.

Dave

[StevieDvd]

Sorry for adding any confusion I did understand the issue is with the lakeside motor and bracket, in hindsight my wording was poor.  I use both lakeside kit and moonlite.

What I was trying to say is that the older moonlite focusers had no clutch so there may be brackets that were considered standard back then, now with the clutch added it needs a longer bracket. 

So if I were adding a lakeside or Moonlite motor I would need to specify whether it was for a moonlite focuser with or without clutch. I would not recommend trying to remove the clutch ring, if it were that simple Moonlite would not need to have created a longer bracket for their own motor kits.

 

 

 

[Davey-T]

Peter at Lakeside will probably have the right bracket in stock.

Dave