William Optics ZS61 focus gear flexing.

[Andy56]

Hi, All those who brave the cold winter nights,

I use APT and the other night I was using GoTo++ and the  first images for plate-solving had streaky stars. The second and third didn't, so I'm assuming that there is flexing in the system and the cables are cold (-5deg) and stiff and taking some time to relax to tere new positions after moving the telescope. 

After a bit of fiddling I found there is play in the telescope in two places. For this post I would like opinion on one of these issues.

The focuser appears to be flexing where it it secured onto the main part of the telescope. 

If I hold the body of the telescope and gently move the camera the focussing gear rotates slightly on the telescope body as shown by the red arrow. I have gently tightened the Alan screws circled in green and it has improved it a bit but there is still some movement. That has stiffened the focus but not to much.

I don't want to strip down the telescope to find if there are any screws that could be tightened at this moment without further advice. 

So my question is  whether this is normal and I should accept this, or is there something that could be done.

I know I should tidy up my cabling but so far (during the summer) I've not had this issue. I have a 12v and USB 3 cable hanging off the end of the camera at the moment which I will correct the next time I use it.

Many thanks

Andy

Edit: corrected typo

 

Edited December 14, 2022 by Andy56