Repairing my Trinocular Stereo Zoom Microscope
I purchased this microscope back around 2008 to look at mineral specimens I picked up in a local bazaar when I was posted at the American Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. Afghanistan is a very mineral-rich country and I found lots of beautiful specimens in the bazaar from a local geologist.
The microscope has worked fine over the years since, but recently I noticed there's a problem with the zoom.
The microscope has worked fine over the years since, but recently I noticed there's a problem with the zoom.
The microscope is decent quality for the money I spent, and it's great for viewing minerals, fossils, tiny critters and even surface-mount electronics. It has built-in lighting both above and below the stage, and I can also attach a camera to capture images through the third port. It's Chinese-made and there's no brand name on it, but if memory serves me, I bought it online from Microscopes.com.
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This view shows the gearing causing the issue. The white, horizontal gear is the one that broke. I tried to order a new gear but could not find one, so I had to get creative. In the end the repair was actually pretty simple. I repositioned and superglued the plastic gear back in place on the brass body easily enough, but because of the shrinkage, the gear is now a tooth short.
I filled the gap in the gear with epoxy, and as it set I rotated it with its greased mate to form the epoxy into a new tooth. It came out good, but was actually unnecessary as I discovered the gear makes less than one full turn, so all I really needed to do was position the gear to where the gap never mated with the vertical gear. The biggest issue with the repaired gear is that because of the shrinkage it's now slightly larger in diameter and a very tight fit with the vertical gear. Fortunately the vertical gear had a thin nylon spacer on its left, and all I had to do was remove the spacer to relieve the tightness. |
One ocular adjustment was loose, which is easy to retighten, but I popped off the cover just to be sure there were no other issues. And it allowed me to snap a photo of the prism assembly.
All is good with the scope now, and next I want to try out a couple of ZWO astro cameras to see how they'll work as microscope imagers. |
Page created 7/06/2024
Last edited 7/06/2024
Last edited 7/06/2024