What has happened with the Explore Scientific love?

[Bigzmey]

I had a couple of ES APO fracs in the past. If you re-grease, tune up and use them gently ES focusers work fine for visual purpose. The weak spots were flimsy screws and soft metal on the rotation collar. I can see people running into issues if they use heavy EPs or cameras. But then most mass produced scopes come with very basic or subpar focusers.

[helicon]

I had a couple of ES APO fracs in the past. If you re-grease, tune up and use them gently ES focusers work fine for visual purpose. The weak spots were flimsy screws and soft metal on the rotation collar. I can see people running into issues if they use heavy EPs or cameras. But then most mass produced scopes come with very basic or subpar focusers.

The AR152 I bought from lowjiber featured a replacement focuser, a moonlite one which works great.

[Lady Fraktor]

Unfortunately Moonlite only caters to the AP crowd now. They will not even repair a manual focuser now.
Due to this I had to purchase a different brand for the C6-R and Antares.

Since I do not use the rotation feature on any of my telescopes I never had issues with that.
Screws loosening was a issue when first shipped but once tightened all was good.
My only complaint was the serrated Teflon sliders, the drawtube was much more secure once these were replaced with solid strips of PTFE.

One of the complaints was that the drawtube was to short for visual so adapters had to be used.

[SkyHiker]

The weak spots were flimsy screws and soft metal on the rotation collar.

I agree with that one. My rotation collar metal is dented.

[helicon]

Unfortunately Moonlite only caters to the AP crowd now. They will not even repair a manual focuser now.
Due to this I had to purchase a different brand for the C6-R and Antares.

Since I do not use the rotation feature on any of my telescopes I never had issues with that.
Screws loosening was a issue when first shipped but once tightened all was good.
My only complaint was the serrated Teflon sliders, the drawtube was much more secure once these were replaced with solid strips of PTFE.

One of the complaints was that the drawtube was to short for visual so adapters had to be used.

Speaking of rotating it does do that. That might be an annoying feature actually. You can see the red moonlite focuser on my avatar picture. Being as I don't know what the original OEM focuser was like it's hard to say. I can say that I like the focuser on the 102 XLT better.

[Lady Fraktor]

Your Moonlite rotates Michael?

If the stock XLT focuser is better than the Moonlite, the Moonlite definitely needs some work.

[Bigzmey]

Your Moonlite rotates Michael?

If the stock XLT focuser is better than the Moonlite, the Moonlite definitely needs some work.

It could be just a personal preference for R&P over Crayford focusers. While I am using GSO Crayfords on a couple of my scopes, I also prefer the feel of R&P. Too bad there are no helical R&P focuser upgrades in the mid price range.

[AstroBee]

I have an ED127 and ED152 that I both love. I've bragged about them in the past so no need to keep it up. As others have mentioned, a few years back E.S. was very competitive in quality/price but these days they are the same as W.O., SharpStar, SkyWatcher and Askar and a multitude of other companies. There's nothing these days that make them stand out among all the others.

[SkyHiker]

I love Explore Scientific for the community support, innovative development and low prices. Scott Roberts always visited the RTMC with his crew and provided the rather significant main prizes of which I won one, an ED127CF. Later on, I bought some more products from them: The MN152 (a 6" Mak-Newt), a Nano mount, an ED80 (80 mm triplet) and a 2" field flattener.

The MN152 is probably my most favorite telescope developed by Scott Roberts and David Levy. It has a flat imaging plane, no correctors required. Here is a nice video with Woodland Hills about its history and features: . My images are modest but note that J Thommes produced many impressive images with it. Unfortunately, it is not produced anymore.

BTW, The video mentions lifetime support. This means that if you happen to drive over your telescope, Explore Scientific will replace it with a new one if you send them the broken parts. I haven't tried this yet and hopefully never will. I also don't know how they would do this for scopes that are no longer produced.

Another interesting product is their PMC-Eight controller that is used with their Exos and Losmandy mounts. I watched their development early on at the RTMC when it just got started. They had several parallel cores controlling the steppers. It has a decent user community though I don't think it ever took off. Nevertheless, it takes a significant effort to develop such a system with a server and several full featured clients. These monolithic control systems probably try to do too much and include features for which there are other hardware independent systems. Here's a link: https://explorescientificusa.com/collec ... %20clients. The Exos mounts are relatively cheap, early versions are hit and miss but they should be mature now. I have always been curious about an Exos-2 with PMC-8 but never bought one yet. I doubt if it can compete with OnStep in combination with Ekos.

Their eyepiece offering is also quite famous, good quality and much more affordable than the high-end brands. Enough to love I think.

[Juno16]

Back on the focuser discussion for my experience.
When I first received my ES ED102, the R&P focuser was pretty sloppy. Lots of loose movement and the fine focus knob slipped pretty badly.
A quick email to tech support was all that was needed. A simple adjustment was all that was needed to re-engage the fine adjustment.
As far as the overall focuser, they sent me this document to tighten it up (like night and day).

Rack and Pinion Focuser Adjustments.docx

(633.76 KiB) Downloaded 8 times

.
Made a huge difference and I have since disassembled the focuser, cleaned and regreased, re-assembled, and adjusted. The focuser has functioned perfectly for AP for many years. I use it with an ASI EAF with excellent performance.

[helicon]

I love Explore Scientific for the community support, innovative development and low prices. Scott Roberts always visited the RTMC with his crew and provided the rather significant main prizes of which I won one, an ED127CF. Later on, I bought some more products from them: The MN152 (a 6" Mak-Newt), a Nano mount, an ED80 (80 mm triplet) and a 2" field flattener.

The MN152 is probably my most favorite telescope developed by Scott Roberts and David Levy. It has a flat imaging plane, no correctors required. Here is a nice video with Woodland Hills about its history and features: . My images are modest but note that J Thommes produced many impressive images with it. Unfortunately, it is not produced anymore.

BTW, The video mentions lifetime support. This means that if you happen to drive over your telescope, Explore Scientific will replace it with a new one if you send them the broken parts. I haven't tried this yet and hopefully never will. I also don't know how they would do this for scopes that are no longer produced.

Another interesting product is their PMC-Eight controller that is used with their Exos and Losmandy mounts. I watched their development early on at the RTMC when it just got started. They had several parallel cores controlling the steppers. It has a decent user community though I don't think it ever took off. Nevertheless, it takes a significant effort to develop such a system with a server and several full featured clients. These monolithic control systems probably try to do too much and include features for which there are other hardware independent systems. Here's a link: https://explorescientificusa.com/collec ... %20clients. The Exos mounts are relatively cheap, early versions are hit and miss but they should be mature now. I have always been curious about an Exos-2 with PMC-8 but never bought one yet. I doubt if it can compete with OnStep in combination with Ekos.

Their eyepiece offering is also quite famous, good quality and much more affordable than the high-end brands. Enough to love I think.

I wonder if the lifetime support also includes tripods. I have the Twilight II and unfortunately it was damaged when I moved. Took awhile to notice it because one of the dovetails no longer holds and the support bracket got bent. Anyway the tripod is probably not really necessary to hold the scope's weight I mean for the XLT.

[pakarinen]

It could be just a personal preference for R&P over Crayford focusers. While I am using GSO Crayfords on a couple of my scopes, I also prefer the feel of R&P. Too bad there are no helical R&P focuser upgrades in the mid price range.

Not the same, but I'm using a WO diagonal with helical foucser with my ST102 with stock R&P. The R&P usually gets me to good focus, but the WO gives me a little finer control. I want to try it on my ST120 once I take off the GSO 2-speed and put the stock R&P back on it.

[Bigzmey]

I wonder if the lifetime support also includes tripods. I have the Twilight II and unfortunately it was damaged when I moved. Took awhile to notice it because one of the dovetails no longer holds and the support bracket got bent. Anyway the tripod is probably not really necessary to hold the scope's weight I mean for the XLT.

Give them a call or shoot email what worse would happen? My experience with their customer support was quite favorable.

[SkyHiker]

Maybe Scott was a bit over-enthusastic about the warranty, or I misunderstood what he said. Here's the link about their warranty, it is quite different from how I interpreted what he said in the video.

[Ylem]

Your Moonlite rotates Michael?

If the stock XLT focuser is better than the Moonlite, the Moonlite definitely needs some work.

It could be just a personal preference for R&P over Crayford focusers. While I am using GSO Crayfords on a couple of my scopes, I also prefer the feel of R&P. Too bad there are no helical R&P focuser upgrades in the mid price range.

I also prefer R&P, I struggle to get the Crayford to work properly on my Orion 80ed, especially with 2" EPs.
I do realize of course that the Crayford on my Orion is pretty much a low budget assembly.

[Lady Fraktor]

Once I had the hex-focuser set up on my Bresser 102/ 1350 it was very smooth and worked well. No issues with it.

[helicon]

The focuser on my 102mm XLT actually is easier to use than the AR152 focuser, snaps to a sharp focus. The Moonlite kind of mushes through focus area and requires a lot of turning of the knob.

[Bigzmey]

The focuser on my 102mm XLT actually is easier to use than the AR152 focuser, snaps to a sharp focus. The Moonlite kind of mushes through focus area and requires a lot of turning of the knob.

In my experience with GSO Crayfords you need to have tension tighter than on R&P, otherwise there is some slipping. It should feel like there is a bit of restriction to turn.

[Lady Fraktor]

The focuser on my 102mm XLT actually is easier to use than the AR152 focuser, snaps to a sharp focus. The Moonlite kind of mushes through focus area and requires a lot of turning of the knob.

Do you mean using the course focuser or fine focus knob?
It almost sounds like it is slipping a bit.

It could just require a cleaning of the flat surface on the bottom of the drawtube.
Some people claim that polishing the flat with a paste car wax also helps add a bit of stitction to the flat and keeps it from slipping.
When set up properly a Moonlite should pull a 2.3 kg (5 lb) load straight up with only slight use of the tension adjuster.

[helicon]

I think I mean the coarse focuser. I do recall now that there is a fine adjustment knob but I've had a tendency not to use it. Thanks for the tip!