Any chance you have fusion360 versions of your designs? In my case, the focuser is also a mounting base for an arca-swiss quick release plate that I connect a custom set of enclosures for the electronics to. And the base / focuser is all 3d printed, so the base has to be pretty thick to give it the needed strength (using most of the gap between the dovetail and RedCat itself). Part of the reason I wanted to try again with the belt solution is that the product from deepskydad.com claims to successfully use a belt-driven focuser.

Ultimately it does seem like a geared approach is generally better though. One of my goals was to allow the RedCat to be completely retracted when not in use. Given that it needs nearly 180° of rotation to do that, I'd need to mount the stepper above the scope or add a riser of some sort to allow room for the gears underneath the scope. I'll have to do some calculations to see if there might be enough clearance for an appropriately-sized gear between the scope and the dovetail if my mounting base wasn't in the way. I might be able to add a slot with clearance for the gear is that seems feasible. How far does your gear extend out from the surface of the focuser?

I still would like to try my geared stepper, though I'm not sure its actually going to work. When testing with the existing driver doing 32-microsteps and having it step just one step, it doesn't always move forward a consistent amount. I'll have to see if the other stepper I have been using does the same thing. I wonder if there is an issue with the stepper driver or the configuration of the Waveshare stepper hat.

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