Quote:
Originally Posted by pjphilli
Hi Mitchell
I did the same thing for my 80mm Meade refractor using a plastic lid to increase the focus knob size by 2 giving a cheap 2:1 gearing. It works fine and the price was right! You are right about the small size of the original knobs - I sometimes think that astro gear designers have never done any star gazing.
Cheers Peter
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Great minds hey!!? Thanks for conferring what I was thinking. I found the lid worked well and thought I would experiment further. I wanted to find out what the max size/practibility was. I chose to modify a 10cm plastic (so it was lite) trolley wheel. It had a tread cut into the rubber tyre. I wanted a smooth rubber surface, so I used a blade and sand paper to remove the tread. I then fixed the correct sized bolt via a nut and washer sandwich. The wheel did not have bearings.
Took it out for a trial run briefly last night. Seems to make life easier.