[Quark (Trevor)]

Hi All,
Interesting thread.

I had one of the original nylon bodied Ezy Collimator's that suffered from collimation problems itself. Bintel kindly replaced it with the second generation aluminum bodied Ezy Collimator. This is a double pass laser and does a great job.

There really are some critical considerations with regards to laser collimator's. The clearance of it in your focuser is critical to it's performance.
I have machined my own adapters for my focuser to keep this clearance minimal.

I think the locking screw on the focuser should be orientated on top in the vertical plane to minimize any wobble of the laser body in the focuser.
This orientation should be used each time the scope is collimated.

Very few lasers are actually collimated accurately enough for the job expected of them, their intrinsic alignment can change over time. Every six months I put my laser in the 3 jaw self centreing chuck of my lathe and collimate it on a target 12ft away.

I have tested three different double pass lasers, all when brand new, none were collimated correctly. I have been to 5 SPSP's and met many people that thought their scopes were collimated because they used a laser. After looking through their scopes it was apparent that they were not collimated very well at all.

It is amazing how many times the quality of the seeing is blamed when poor collimation is more likely the problem.

My point here is that the alignment of the laser really needs to set very accurately and it really requires specialized equipment to do that.

Regards
Trevor