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 Post subject: Some Wild M7S questions
PostPosted: Fri Sep 14, 2018 8:59 am 
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A few years ago, I bought a Wild M3, after reading the enthusiastic reports, here, about Wild macro and stereo microscopes. I was not disappointed. I sort of like the extra relief it gives rough objects. I was less enamored by the chromatic aberrations it shows with high contrast specimens, aberrations that were quite noticeable even in the pictures I took holding a cell phone over an eyepiece.

After a couple months, I realized a trinocular, Wild M7S was the microscope for me, and patiently set about finding one on ebay. Four near misses, two trialed candidates and five years later, I had my microscope. I suppose I should ask: does that make me some sort of Wild zombie? :)

Here is the microscope:

Image

The last couple months, I have been adding the camera you see, with some inspired guidance from a fellow who tinkers with legacy cameras. If anyone is interested, I would be happy to write about the charms of micro four thirds. First, however, there is a little matter I should probably take care of.

When I received the microscope, the screw was loose that clamped the lower zoom unit to the rack and pinion focus drive. You could also freely turn the zoom unit with respect to the objective.

The fellow who serviced the microscope, tightened everything up, but I think he inadvertently rotated everything 180 degrees:

Image

As you can see, the serial number is now upside down, and the thumb screw for clamping the next, higher optical unit is at the back. More annoyingly, the ball knob, changeover lever, that swings the objective from under the left opticial path to between the left and right paths, now swings behind the microscope and collides with the rack and pinion.

How can I rotate the objective so that the lever swings in front of the zoom unit rather than behind? I tried loosening the upper three, M3 set screws (346_203, upper, orange finger):

Image

They, however, just fix the zoom unit with respect to the objective. I have not really tried the single, lower, M4 set screw (178_728, lower, orange finger), that compresses a spring and ball bearing (138_252 and 167_002). What is it for and does it work with the two wire springs, (313_783, two, orange fingers):

Image

Thank you in advance for any help, and for leading me to a couple very fine microscopes!


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 Post subject: Re: Some Wild M7S questions
PostPosted: Sat Sep 15, 2018 3:05 pm 
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IMO the first solution to this is to require the guy that created this little mess, to be the one to clean it up.


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 Post subject: Re: Some Wild M7S questions
PostPosted: Sun Sep 16, 2018 9:49 am 
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I quite agree and it annoys me not a little to be asking others for help on an issue that is the service company's responsibility. The problem is the customer is the first to suffer when something like this happens. My suffering will be considerably less if the fix is something simple that I can do on my own. If that is asking too much, however, I will bear the consequences and return the microscope for rework.

There are three other issues with the work I will raise with the company, whose name you will probably recognize. Rest assured, that I will be asking them why any of them should have happened.


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 Post subject: Re: Some Wild M7S questions
PostPosted: Fri Sep 21, 2018 12:16 pm 
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Well, I received some guidance from the fellow who worked on the microscope. Rotating the objective 180 degrees with respect to the rack-and-pinion proved to be straight forward.

I mounted the magnification body upside down and loosened the ring surrounding the objective: by inserting the stubby ends of two hex wrenches in the two spline holes in the ring surrounding the objective, then torquing the ring counter-clockwise.

I hand rotated the ring a few turns CCW to raise it a few millimeters.

I lifted the objective out of its keyed position in the cam mechanism, rotated the objective 180 degrees and then lowered it back into the cam, with the keyed ends swapped.

Finally, I tightened the ring by hand and with the hex wrenches.


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 Post subject: Re: Some Wild M7S questions
PostPosted: Fri Sep 21, 2018 3:48 pm 
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Thanks for the followup! I'm sure this will be helpful to at least one other m7s owner in the future.
I hope we'll be seeing some pictures taken through it too!

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