Motorized BORG R&P Focuser
BORG rack & pinion is known as a good focuser. Yes, I agree. Solid and smooth, not as smooth as FTF, but close. But unfortunately there is no motorized option commercially available. One of recent BORG 90FL customers – Federico Spotti, an excellent mechanical engineer, added the motor unit and controller onto his BORG focuser by himself.
Probably he is 1st BORG user who has retrofitted the motorized option, as far as I know. According to him, the housing was made by 3D printer and electronics was build up based on a following publicly-available DIY project site.
Very interesting site. I don’t think I can do myself. But there are so many numbers of smart engineers or skillful technicians in our community. Those people should be able to handle this kind of work. So I wanted to share this info with other BORG users here.
Federico also cut a drawtube himself to allow to use BORG 0.72x super reducer. Another drawback of BORG R&P is a length of drawtube. It’s too long for a reducer. Unfortunately the drawtube front end blocks the light into the reducer. (I was strongly requesting BORG to make a short version available from the beginning. Unfortunately not done yet….. this is the reason why there is no R&P Focuser set as astrograph package)
Well done, and he says everything is mechanically and electrically working fine as expected. Congratulations !! Now he is ready for astro imaging with the reducer and the motorized R&P focuser. Enjoy imaging with your own-made items, which must make you happier during focusing too. You did really nice work.
