I got a new scope for nothing today!

[StarSapling]

Three years ago I purchased a 120mm f5 refractor for faint fuzzies.  Though the scope performed excellently on faint fuzzies, it was horrible when it came to viewing bright objects through it, bright stars flared out all over the place and I had to stop down the aperature if I wanted to look at the moon or planets with it.

I had been reading about how a lot of these low cost, large aperature fast telescopes had collimnation issues from the factory and there was very little one could do about it.  There were a few tricks suggested, so I decided to give some of them a try.

When I was preparing to take off the dew shield, I noticed the whole objective lens cell assembly was screwed onto the end of the optical tube assembly.  I also noticed that the cell assembly was canted at an angle to the optical tube assembly.  It turns out that when the scope was assembled at the factory, the had cross threaded the cell assembly onto the OTA.  I unscrewed the cell assembly and screwed it back on correctly.  I took the scope out tonight to see if there was any improvement in its performance.

It was like I had gotten a new telescope!  The star images were tack sharp, even at 120x!  The star images were not as sharp as they are in my 90mm f10 refractor, but that's to be expected.  I was even able to split all four components of the Double Double in Lyra at 94X!

Is quality assurance an alien, incomprehensible concept to Chinese manufactures?   I remember back in the 70's and early 80's when we used to complain about the quality of Japanese optics, but I don't remember the quality of Japanese optics being anywhere near as low as the quality of modern Chinese optics are!

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Great result. Much of the complaining about Japanese optics in the the 70s and 80s was what we would now call FUD, spread by both certain European manufacturers and optics snobs. Similarly, current Chinese optics are often excellent. My APM triplet, and Helios Apollo HDs are two examples of what the Chinese can do when they build up to a specification, rather than down to a price.

[cotterless45]

It's quite mystifying as to where things go wrong at quality control.

I had a Meade Lightbridge , new, the secondary spider had been put on backwards and bent to get collimation using an off centre primary spot.

A friend bought a short Opticstar frac. The dual focuser was so bad , you could feel and hear it's grittiness. It had been put together in the dark ! Taking it apart and correctly assembling got it back to acceptable use.

I was quite amazed to see newbies turn up with scopes that had plastic screws.

Let's not forget the bendy bolts that SW use.

Just small tweaks can make a big difference,

Nick.

[Dave In Vermont]

I am often left speechless when I try out some new piece of glass from Guan Sheng Optical - GSO. As a result, I buy new products from them quite often. In fact I'm waiting out the clouds to put a new 5X 'apochromatic' Barlow through it's paces. The thing has the look and heft of the 5X TeleVue PowerMate.

We shall see.

Dave

[ronin]

It's quite mystifying as to where things go wrong at quality control.

QA is not every item, at best it will be 1 in 10 that is what the MOD used to require was checked, more likely one from every batch and a batch can easily be 1000 units.

Nowhere like Synta/Meade are going to check every item they push out the door, not unless it can be done automatically and in about three seconds.

Meade QA is likely to be "Is it Blue?", and Celestron QA "Is it Orange?". :grin: :grin:

I would also suspect that some assembly is done at the importers or at the retailers, so the "QA" problem may be at the UK end not the Chinese end. I have visited a couple of retailers where the knowledge was so lacking that I made a delicate withdrawal from the places. :eek:

[F15Rules]

I am often left speechless when I try out some new piece of glass from Guan Sheng Optical - GSO. As a result, I buy new products from them quite often. In fact I'm waiting out the clouds to put a new 5X 'apochromatic' Barlow through it's paces. The thing has the look and heft of the 5X TeleVue PowerMate.

We shall see.

Dave

 I must agree that GSO equipment on the whole seems to be very well put together for what is a mass produced product. I use a Revelation 2" ED barlow and am often surprised at just how well it performs. Similarly, I had the range of TS Optics RKE (Reversed Kellner) eyepieces in 2" barrels, at 26mm, 32mm and 42mm and each of them was a superb performer in my F9 and slower scopes - for under £40 each.

Dave

[John]

I've owned 25+ scopes over the years from a wide range of manufacturers and countries of origin. Virtually all of them had some quirks and annoyances that needed sorting out to get the best out of them.

Some of the worst offenders of my bunch were GSO made I'm afraid

[jetstream]

My Stellarvue 90mm APO has Chinese glass I think, but is is an excellent performer, as are the ES eyepieces and the Baader BCO. Quality must depend on the business specing the products out.... and on the price they are willing to pay. The SW120ED is would give some much more expensive glass a run for the money too... IMHO

I'm glad you got your scope performing well StarSapling!

[Alfian]

Great result. Much of the complaining about Japanese optics in the the 70s and 80s was what we would now call FUD, spread by both certain European manufacturers and optics snobs. Similarly, current Chinese optics are often excellent. My APM triplet, and Helios Apollo HDs are two examples of what the Chinese can do when they build up to a specification, rather than down to a price.

Reminiscent of unprintable remarks about early (now classic) Japanese motorcycles. They were not perfect but significantly neither were many British and Italian bikes of the time and I've ridden quite a few of them. Most, could be significantly improved upon and fortunately many were and ridden with the corresponding smiles per miles. StarSapling (thats a nice handle) I'm glad you tweaked your scope and released it potential - that must be a bit of a buzz. 

[StarSapling]

Reminiscent of unprintable remarks about early (now classic) Japanese motorcycles. They were not perfect but significantly neither were many British and Italian bikes of the time and I've ridden quite a few of them. Most, could be significantly improved upon and fortunately many were and ridden with the corresponding smiles per miles. StarSapling (thats a nice handle) I'm glad you tweaked your scope and released it potential - that must be a bit of a buzz. 

It is! Before I corrected the collimation, I thought it was a fantastic scope for faint fuzzies.  I can't wait until I get a good night, if I thought it was a good scope before, I'm expecting to have my mind blown away now!

I'm sorry for coming down so hard on the Chinese.  The fact is all my instruments, aside from my 10" dob and a couple of ortho eyepieces, are from China, and, after a few tweaks here and there, I've been happy with their performance and price, especially the performance of my 90mm f10 refractor.  It is just that I don't believe that we the consumers should have to "tweak" the products we receive.  They didn't have to "tweak" my payments to them!  Returning defective products should be a rare event, not something we have come to accept as the norm.

[Alfian]

You're absolutely right, under consumers rights stuff should be fit for purpose and of merchantable quality, or something  like that, and if something is not what you expect it to be or its obviously broken you send it back. However, if you can see something that's not quite as it should be  but is fixable you often tend to do it rather than go through the hassle of sending it back, and when I say you I mean me for one. Its not the right thing to do because we/I become complicit in the consumer becoming a willing part of the quality control process. Generally the higher cost/ better the quality equipment has better quality control, it tends to be the "budget" but still decent quality (for the money)  that seems to suffer more, and no it should not be the norm that we accept this. 

Fortunately we have some retailers (here) that are extremely good at supporting and helping out with these kind of issues, so no excuses really! I think I've talked myself into a kind of new years resolution!