You'll be happy to know that in the upcoming 7.2, ACP supports the PWI auto-focus directly, eliminating the need for FocusMax. There should be no need to "wait" (for how long anyway??) but if ACP is trying to simply change the focus position, and FocusMax is in line with the focuser, and if PWI is the focuser driver then a rather fat chain of events happens as you see. An aside, ACP 7.2 also starts FocusMax up at the beginning of a run, leaving it run for the whole run. I still recommend starting FocusMax (and in your case PWI) up at the beginning of the night. ACP is just twigging the focus position. If there are timing problems they are almost certainly between FocusMax and PWI. As it is, with other focusers the "start on demand" of FocusMax hadn't been a problem. I still agree that it's better to start it once.