Joined: Mon Oct 17, 2005 9:28 am Posts: 61 Location: Ontario, Canada
interesting with the vaseline...I guess if it helps, go for it. I must add that I haven't had this problems for many many years now...hope I didn't jinx it, lol
If you use vaseline make certain you get it all off. The heat of the quartz halogen lamp can cook it. If you can find white Teflon grease, that is a better thing to use. It is pretty heat resistant.
If you don't use a lubricant (the preferred way) you can lube the leaves and possibly prevent a recurrence by using graphite lock lubricant powder. It is completely heat resistant. (Don't use it on camera lenses nor on irises inside microscope bodies or you will regret it sorely, but on a Gemolite base the graphite can't cause too much mischief).
The use of a small clip to keep them from escaping where you put them is a very good idea if you happen to have handy the right clip. It needs to be small enought to fit into the partially closed iris pupil and big enough to pin down about three of the iris leaves. It needs to exert gentle pressure so as not to bend the leaves.
Sometimes it is useful, before you completely disassemble the iris, to mark the two sides of the leaves with chalk or something colored but easy to remove so that you can make sure you assemble it the way it was. I have worked on irises that were possible to assemble backwards. Very exasperating to spend a half hour and then find the thing works backwards (a motor operated one I am thinking of).
First post here, i follow the forum since few months, i would share a very helpfull link, as my microscope's iris diaphragm needed some maintenance i searched and find this video.
With this video and two tweezers, it's just take five minutes to repair the iris diaphragm.
Cheers
edit: problem with the video's link
Last edited by jooj on Mon Jun 08, 2015 1:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Joined: Tue Jul 02, 2013 9:00 am Posts: 1322 Location: Wylie Texas but in Alaska for a while
I thought that I had posted this earlier, but I do not see my post. There seems to be a web page on everything. I found one dedicated to microscopes that had an article on iris repair.
That video does show(generally) how it is done, but has a couple of problems.
One is that the video shows the last three or four leaves going in in animation. In reality those last couple of leaves are the hard ones. Those are the ones, that you have to lift on the other one,s which is what requires you to clip them, magnet them, or ( !) vaseline them(which I have never done) into place. They NEVER just go in like in the video. The last few are why it can be an exasperating job.
Also they show leaves that have a fold on one end. These are characteristic of cheaper (or older japanese) microscopes. Gemolites and most other microscopes have a pin, where the right angle fold is depicted. Although I have repaired a large number of irises (including double irises that were operated by a servo and had to operate in perfect synchrony to block light out of a scintillation counter) I have only seen one or two with the fold on the leaves. One of them had a break, right at the fold and thus was not repairable. It came off of a 1970s vintage Olympus microscope.
The microscopy uk page covers the topic well, including a bit about re-peening loosened pins. It is very important that wrinkled pins be burnished flat or the iris will just crinkle up again. While it is apart is a good time to treat each leaf with graphite ( a soft lead pencil is good for that) making certain you don't bend them up or make them worse. If they are metal and have rust on them then while apart you can rub the leaves with the finest steel wool you can get your hands on (like 0000)
Yes sure you're right, but i have done it in five minutes with mine, may be because i'm bench jeweler it was easy, but with just two tweezers and nothing else it was really fast to accomplish.
I don't know all types of iris diaphragm, but mine is the same thing without fold, it comes with pins as you said. I lifted up each leaf and insert the next under the last i placed (not sure if it's understandable).
I saw the microscopy uk page but english is not my native language (as you can see ),and sometimes when i'm lazy i prefer watch a video, may be this video will be able to help to understand the process for those who aren't really comfortable with english .
Being a bench jeweler is harder than fixing an iris diaphragm. If you hadn't told me that English wasn't your native language I would not have noticed.
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