Collimation issues with an Intes Micro Alter M703

[Saturn five]

I have owned an Intes Micro Alter M703 mak cass (bought second hand with no instructions) for a number of years now but due to a change in personal circumstances, it has remained stored and unused for the past five years. I have recently brought the scope out of storage only to find out that the collimation (very reliable in the past) is now poor. I am very much an amateur in many respects but have some experience collimating Meade SCT's and dobs. However in this case, I have removed the cover on the secondary only to find that there are six screws (3 long with lots of thread showing and three short with just the heads visible). Before I dive in (I am somewhat wary here in case I make things worse) has anyone any experience in collimating these scopes? I have searched the internet but not come up with much so far.

Thanks,

Ian

[Iddy]

If its anything like my Newtonian, the long ones are for major adjustments ( ie, your mirror is bumped to the other side of the scope ) and the short ones are for minor adjustments.

Now mind you, i dont have any experience with collimating a Mak Cass, but thats the first thing that came to me...

found some threads for you :

http://www.cloudynights.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/4607161/Main/4602772

and a beautiful one from our own forum :

Hope it helps m8!

iddy

[damnut]

Hi There,,

If you have a Mak, the secondary is aluminised to the rear of the meniscus front lens and is not collimatable. If you remove the meniscus you will need to ensure that you accurately put it baclk in the same place, uese tippex to mark a couple of spots. Also you may find some packing material, these will also need to be returned to original position.

Aguide to the collimation of the rear screws for an Orion 150 can be found here. http://www.google.co...bdizFdj14eH4ZjQ . You should have the same type of presentation on the rear cell. You will only need to move the screws a fraction to make suitable changes. I would also mark the starting positions before attempting to align.

Cheers

[Saturn five]

Hi Damian,

Thanks for your reply and the link. With the Intes Micro the secondary mirror is of the moveable kind as is the primary. I guess I will have to take a chance and go down the route of small movement of the secondary screws first and see if things improve before tackiling the primary.

Cheers,

Ian

[Saturn five]

Hi Iddy,

Thanks very interesting threads and information. I will have a go this weekend if the skies stay clear and let you know how I get on.

Cheers,

Ian

[John]

Hi Ian,

I think I read somewhere that the M703 is a little unusual in that you can also adjust the tilt of the primary mirror ?.

I know on my Intes MN61 (mak-newt) the collimation screws were the opposite that you would have guessed, ie: the small, insignificant ones actually adjusted the collimation and the larger ones were just the locking screws.

The Russian scopes can be a little quirky in this respect !

[Saturn five]

Hi John,

Thanks for the reply. You are spot on with your information in that the M703 has both primary and secondary adjustment. I had a chance to look more closely last night and I am fairly convinced that the primary is centered and its alignment is not an issue. I hope this is the case because the thought of adjusting two mirrors at this stage is not one I want to consider. Before the clouds moved in last night I had a bit of a go with the collimation using adjustment of the secondary only. By the time I had found all my screwdrivers and glasses and got my act together the only really visible stars were sirius and rigel so not the best collimation targets. Also it takes an age for the scope to cool down and I really did not get anywhere near to thermal equilibrium. Anyway using rigel as a target I managed to get a reasonable result at least at low magnification. Things still looked Ok at higher magnificantion but the tube currents were a problem. All in all I am reasonably happy with this as a starting point at least and have managed to borrow a picostar for the weekend so hopefully I can tweak it a bit irrespective of the weather.

I have to admit it has been a long while since I have had time to mess around with the optics on any telescope and I realised last night that despite the frustrating cloud cover, I really like playing with collimation. Time seemed to fly by and after a day achieving very little in work it was a nice relaxing experience!

How was that MN61 of yours I hear they are really excellent telescopes?

Ian