Collimating a collimator…

[rawhead]

Had a crack at this last night. Built a vey high tech cradle (instructions here) works very well. No problems there.

Very faint laser dot (getting fainter by the second) Need new batteries. 3 LR44s Last one got stuck! Got it out eventually, replaced with some brand new

Energizers Wow!!!! What a difference…. I never knew it went that bright! (Must have another go at Laser Barlow collimation…)

Then the fun started. Projecting the laser on a distant wall (20 feet) Rotating the collimator revealed it was miles out! The BRIGHT red dot traced a circle with a diameter of at least 30cm. No wonder I could never get the darn thing to agree with the Cheshire.

I then spent the next hour adjusting one of three screws with a very very thin Allen key. Bit better, bit better, a lot worse

I then thought I would have a look under the cap to see if it was even close to central. Popped it off and no it wasn’t. Roughly aligned by eye and got it surprisingly well lined up. Played around for another half an hour. Got to within a centimetre or two and thought that’s good enough for me. I still had to put the cap back on. This completely screwed the alignment! :mad:

Back to square one.

I eventually got it back to within two centimetres and put it away. What a palaver. I think I will need to do this everytime I change the batteries. I hope the Energizers last………

Cheers

Jon

[beamish]

Roy if it's any help, you only really have to collimate the dot to a projection that equates to the focal length of your scope ie in my case, project to a distance of 1200mm.

Glad you got it kinda sorted though.

Karlo

[steppenwolf]

I am a great believer in using laser collimators but always bang on about getting them correctly collimated themselves!! I use the 20 foot method as relying on just the focal length of the telescope is not IMHO accurate enough. Mine shows no discernible rotation at a 20 foot projection so I know it is *almost* perfect at the focal length of the telescope. It is vital that the collimator is centred in the EP holder as well and I use electrician's tape to make shims to ensure this.

Get the collimator right and you'll love using it as it makes the adjustments intuitive and simple for one person to perform.

This is the jig I use for mine is simple enough but works just fine:-

[Merlin66]

The attached write-up may be of some help. I have some images of the set up and the target; I'll find them and post also.

Re-collimating a laser.zip

[rawhead]

Thanks for the feedback guys

Your cradle certainly looks better than mine Steve. More of Plumber type feel as opposed to my Chippy influenced creation

That's an excellent Word document Merlin66 Looking forward to the pics. Will have another go this weekend......

Cheers

Jon

[steppenwolf]

More of Plumber type feel as opposed to my Chippy influenced creation

No doubt like me, you used what you happened to have lying around I know this sounds sad but one of my many 'hats' is making the UK's best value Dog Agility Equipment so I had quite a bit of this stuff 'just lying around'

[Merlin66]

OK, here's the images that go with the write-up:

[Merlin66]

And the last couple....

[rawhead]

Thanks Merlin