Olympus SZ-III - how to align???

[isaias]

Please see images. Purchased Olympus SZ-III.

The zoom ring would not turn.

Disassembled. This is the inner portion of the zoom mechanism. The brass portion has an inner tube with lens assembly. The inner lens assembly moves easily.

The outer portion of the brass is machined and appears to be resting on a rail within the aluminum housing. There are springs behind this rail attaching the brass to the aluminum. I assume that this is meant to slide up and down on the aluminium rail. It does not move at all. Is there something I am missing? I cannot free it with application of pressure. may be that grease has set / dried to an extent that it will take significant force to free. But I don't want to take a hammer to it.

Any thoughts / suggestions?

Thanks!!!!!

[75RR]

Never use force. You want to use a solvent - assuming it is dried grease. Make sure you do not get any on the lenses.

[Hobbyst46]

If you do not have a repair manual, try to contact Alan Wood via his web site. He is very kind and helpful and an expert on Olympus scopes.

[isaias]

I managed to remove both slides - without use of a hammer.

Cleaned and applied new grease. Zoom is working. And able to obtain an image.

I have reviewed the repair manual on Alan's webpage for this microscope. I am completely confused by it!

The alignment is very far off, as expected.

Do I need the eyepieces with crosshairs, or is there a way to get by without them?

[wild2020]

just put a coin under the scope align to perfectly fil one eyepiece adjust the other one to match although there will be some displacement from the left-right and then adjust until the image is good I adjusted that model recently it's really well made and easy to adjust, the service manual is good and online,

on my one, it worked fine except it was very cloudy, as someone had used it for soldering so there was lots of flux or whatever inside it so I had to clean every single lense

when I was finished I added a UV filter to keep the dust out it is an uncommon 48mm thread so I used a 48-49 step then put a normal 49 UV filter on it and it will keep all the dust-out
good luck

[wild2020]

https://www.atecorp.com/atecorp/media/p ... Mnaual.pdf