3D Printed spacers for a perfect eye cup fit - and other mic parts

[cmtalb01]

I recently wanted to upgrade my eyepieces from the Nikon CFW to Zeiss corrected eyepieces to see if there was any difference between the corrections noted. I posted another question asking for help discerning the differences.) However, I found that the new Zeiss eyepieces did not have rubber eye cups and without warning would scratch the AR coating of my glasses.

I purchased rubber eye cups to as close a fit as I could find (29-30mm, the eyepiece is 27.8mm) but there was too much room between the eyepiece body and eye cup to make them usable.

I have used the 3D printer on many occasions to make microscope and optic parts and decide to make a thin sleeve to span the distance between the eyepiece body and eyecup. The picture shows the sleeve, eyepieces with the sleeve in place, and eyepieces with the eye cups snuggly fitting over the sleeves. For the older KPL eyepieces, the sleeves were made 0.2mm larger. I use the eyepieces with the lip turned down and they serve only as a bumper between the eyepiece and my glasses. This works amazing well.

I use the 3D printer extensively to make special parts for spectrometers and the microscope. Some other parts recently made for the Zeiss PM are shown below and include a red tint slider adapter, a filter holder, and a eyepiece cap and optical fiber coupler to fit over the photo eyepiece so that spectra can be acquired with a spectrometer.