William Optics The joys of aluminum?

[Tracy]

Well, almost lost my optical train tonight as I was setting up. was going to balance the scope and noticed some jiggling in it and reached for it about the time it separated from the optical tube.
I've had an issue once before where the ring that attaches to the focuser and the tube has worked loose, but thought that simply tightening it would resolve it.
It appears that either the tube itself or the ring is stripped.

So, for now, my captures with the ZenithStar are on hold.
This scope is about 5 years old, but only been used for about the last year. Have sent an email to William at William Optics so am hoping I can get a decent resolution from him. If he doesn't have any ideas, I have a few, but they are rather permanent in nature so I won't ever be able to easily change out the focuser down the line if I wanted to to a larger one, but I honestly doubt if I will ever do that.
So, if I can't get the part I need, I'll simply use some 2 part epoxy on the threads and it should hold it tight, even with the threads being slightly stripped so that it snugs down but works loose easily.

 

[Tracy]

Well, heard back from William Optics and this scope has not been produced for about 4-5 years and parts are non-existent.
So, next step is the 2 part epoxy process, which a William Optics representative said would probably be the best solution and should resolve any issues.

 

[Tracy]

Well, I have cleaned the threads of all material and oils and applied a thin film of J-B Weld steel reinforced epoxy to the threads in question. This is the strongest 2 part epoxy that J-B Weld makes.
This 2 part epoxy has a strength of 5020 PSI with a set time of 4-6 hours and a total cure time of 15 hours. It is a dark grey epoxy, but since I was careful on the application, there is no excess present on the inside or outside of the threads.

So, hopefully by tomorrow night (if weather permits) I'll be back to using it. I tightened the ring down to the point of maximum friction, then a little more and saw where the threads skipped once more and then repeated and stopped when it was very hard to turn.

 

[Tracy]

Was able to get the scope out to test.... but for some reason the mount wasn't wanting to play nicely. After about 3 hours of messing with it decided to remove all the optical trains in Stellarmate since I had recently updated it and recreate them. Once I did that everything went back to working correctly.
Looks like I'm getting good stars on my captures upon initial look. Only able to get a few captures of M 101 in before a meridian flip. Don't want to have to hassle with new flats since the scope is not in the same position to the rest of the train after the fix was done.
Total RMS for the shoot is sitting at 0.54.... one of the best I've had with the EQ6-R Pro.