" wrote:

Uncle Bob wrote:
Greets--
Cloudy all day today, so I spent the afternoon replacing the focuser on
my recently acquired MN-66 Mak-Newt (6", f/6). I had an old JMI crayford
unit laying around in the shop, and although it had a slightly curved
base, and the curve didn't match the MN-66 tube, I installed it in place
of the original focuser. Simply loosened the tiny (1.5mm?) screws on the
base plate and the guts of the focuser fell off in my hand.
The focuser is the big weak point on these scopes. They are cobbled
together crayford-style units with a fit so poor and wobbly that they have
a nasty habit of falling apart under the force of gravity, often with a
big EP in them, when you're rotating the tube. Ugly. Sounds like breaking
glass hitting the patio.

Their (focusers) fit is neither poor nor wobbly and in over 3 years of
heavy usage they never ever failed to deliver high resolution imagery
via heavy EPs or videocameras. You need to understand how the whole
thing is supposed to work, naturally, and endeavour rarely seen of
late.

Andrea T.

Duroc!