MANAGED!! : Separating Konica 85mm Rear Doublet...

tomasg · Expire: 2014-04-28

Well how precisely you think you can put them togheter? I mean what kind of adjustement will you do if you see that the image quality suffers? I never glued two lenses togheter yet, but i would do everything to do it as good as it s possible the first time. Like dry "mounting" them, building a "template" or something, like a tube of the same diameter of the two lenses and so on.

Personally i think if one decides to touch the optical part of a lens one knows chanches are the lens won t be 100 % within factory tolerances. But likely it will be very close, i think in general most people over estimate factory mechanical tolerances, just take a look on youtube how some are assembled. I prefer a lens that i can use, cleaned and lubricated more than a factory one with a stiff focusing ring. Yes probably upon close inspection wide open performance migt suffer a bit, but i was never into corner perfection.

And probably you feel the same, so just go on and do it, the results might be surprising Smile

konicamera · Expire: 2014-06-14

Gardener · Joined: 22 Sep 2013 Posts: 950 Location: USA

I imagine the only way to put them together properly is to make some sort calibration tool - like to shine a pattern and adjust the lenses until it projects perfectly.

PS. Let us know if you find UV-curing glue in the US.

starlights · Joined: 04 Apr 2015 Posts: 96 Location: Washington DC

Thank you for your responses guys. There is some fantastic advice here. I really (truly) appreciate it.

I like the ideas and i think i may try some combination of all of these. One thing that i noticed is that if i applied a drop of water to the lenses and brought them together, they literally moulded themselves together in a pretty close to perfect orientation - perhaps they are made to fit into each others curvature relatively perfectly. I am pretty handy with hand stuff so I am reasonably confident that I will be able to get them aligned them as straight as any factory worker could (though not automated machines).

I am leaning towards the idea of using UVEpoxy and will perhaps go with that.

Earlier today, I polished and cleaned the flint and it appears 95-98% clean. Apparently, the coating on the outside of the flint had also accumulated deposits (like car paint gets rough and scratchy), so I used some car paint swirl remover and polished the flint with a hand held dremel (fitted with felt wheel). It seems to have worked pretty good though there is still a bit of deposits left and if i look carefully under a strong magnifying glass, the effected side (about a 3rd of the flint) looks as if a super thin (micron level) film of cellophane was stuck to that side. This is under extremely close examination, but under normal circumstances the surface looks polished and clean to naked eye.

I followed this tutorial for polishing and cleaning the flint with dremel and swirl remover http://www.4photos.de/camera-diy/Lens-Coating-Removal.html

Fortunately, so far I have found all the tools that i needed at home. The only item missing is the UVEpoxy

Here is a picture of the lens when i got it and all of it (was) in and around the doublet.

[/url]

Thanks to everyone's advice here, I have come pretty far in this process Smile

Hoping to make it all the way!

starlights · Joined: 04 Apr 2015 Posts: 96 Location: Washington DC