NIKON SMZ-2 COLLIMATION HELP

[W1RC]

Hi All:

I recently acquired a nice NIKON SMZ-2 low power zoom microscope. However images I see in the eyepieces do not appear to be correctly aligned because they do not exactly coincide. I am wondering if there is a simple adjustment I might be able to make to correct this. A Google search for any kind of service manual or notes proved fruitless. Any help will be very much appreciated.

Best regards to all....

Michael (w1rc)

[Scarodactyl]

If the issue is side to side, that can be adjusted by focusing the eyepieces. What type of misalignment are you seeing?

[TomFid]

I'm curious if you could say a little more about adjusting side to side via eyepiece focus.

I ask because I have a new-to-me SMZ-10 and I'm having trouble deciding whether it's out of alignment, or just a taste that I haven't quite acquired yet. The symptom is that objects seem considerably displaced in the left and right eyes. I can get them to converge with some effort, or perhaps I'm just turning off one side of my brain. There's no obvious change of alignment when zooming or rotating the eyepieces for interpupillary distance.

I dug up the user manual online. It describes an iterative procedure for adjusting the eyepiece diopters to make zooming parfocal (works), but it doesn't mention collimation. The repair manual on the other hand does describe such a procedure, with a fairly involved teardown and special tools. The troubleshooting table suggests the bino head is the culprit.

I guessed that, since the optical axes are supposed to be parallel, any issue would reveal itself if I used the head at infinity, so I pointed it at the nearby mountains. It seems fine, in that a peak appears in the same location on both sides. So perhaps trouble - if there is any - lies in the body?

[Scarodactyl]

Side to side displacement shows up if your eyepieces aren't in the correct position for parfocality (or if the scope is poorly designed I guess). You'll find if it's just horizontal displacement with no vertical at all that if you focus on something flat, then defocus a bit in either direction you'll find a point where the edges of the image line up. Refocusing the eyepieces will allow that aligned image to be in focus (assuming it isn't out of the range of your eyepieces focusing), but of course if you adjust the zoom setting it will defocus. This could show up worse for an inexperienced user with incompatible eyepieces in their microscope, where they are used both of your new used microscopes are misaligned.
[Note this doesn't necessarily apply with significantly non-planar microscopes, where the horizonal alignment may not quite line up at lower mags when the center is in focus--which may include the SMZ-10, since it shows some doming distortion at low mag. Just get the edges in focus if that's an issue.)
My dad had trouble converging the image with an SMZ-10 I got for him, but not with the bausch and lomb sz7 I replaced it with. I have had a similar problem with a few other stereos, mostly old ones but also a used recently-made Chinese one, though I didn't with the SMZ-10 my dad struggled with. I don't know what causes this, it seems to be independent from how the actual image lines up in each eyepiece. Aside from it being scope-dependent, I found it was also harder to converge any stereo when I got a new pair of glasses that were made wrong and gave me a bit of eye strain. Bad times.

[TomFid]

Thanks - this gives me a few experiments to try. I'm leaning more and more toward the idea that the scope is OK, which would be good. Right now I'm looking at onion skin with transmitted light, and the 3D effect of the sample floating above the dust on the back of the slide is cool, which makes me think things are working. It sure wants a lot of light at higher mags though.