AOE 8x40WA binoculars misaligned

[casstony]

I bought these from AOE because they claim to check every pair but unfortunately they are misaligned. Does anyone know if there are adjustment screws under the covers and how to get to them?

I see cement holding the prisms so I suspect they are not adjustable?

[erick (Eric)]

Originally Posted by casstony

I bought these from AOE because they claim to check every pair but unfortunately they are misaligned. Does anyone know if there are adjustment screws under the covers and how to get to them?

I see cement holding the prisms so I suspect they are not adjustable?

There probably are prism tilt screws - all AOE pairs I have have them. BUT I suggest that you contact them. I would expect them to repair/replace at no cost to you.

[casstony]

No luck contacting them Eric - I've tried twice in the last month or so. After searching for IIS posts regarding AOE I suspect the business is struggling or closed. Can you tell me how to get the covers off and where the screws are?

[erick (Eric)]

This article

http://www.oberwerk.com/support/collimate.htm

has a good description and also a photo showing the location (under the rubber cover) of the tilt screws at the eyepiece end.

Hopefully all you need to do is to adjust one of these to get the vertical collimation correct and this is what matters most.

Set them up on a tripod or stable mount (a pillow?) looking directly at a nice horizontal straight edge - I like a distant gutter (not too close - there might be some variation bewteen close focus and infinite focus). Get your IPD (distance between eyepieces) correct since you will be doing a collimation that is "conditional" on the IPD and you want it set for your preferred IPD. Locate the screw on one side and carefully adjust it (jewellers screwdriver, probably) small amounts in and out while looking through them so you see what happens. Actually, I forgot to say - hold your head back from the eyepieces until you can see the two images with the straight line passing through the centre of each image. Move you head in or out until the two images touch, then you can see if the straight edge connects through the images or is offset up or down. If one screw doesn't give you the movement you need, try the screw on the other side.

(What do you mean by cement? where? Sometimes there is goop on top of the tilt screws fixing them in place. Scrape it out!)

[casstony]

Thanks Eric - I found the collimation screws. I'll have a go at aligning it when I'm in the right frame of mind. If I relax my eyes I can easily see two images, with both vertical and horizontal misalignment.

When looking in through the objective, there are two large blobs of grey/white cement between the corners of each prism and the binocular body.

[casstony]

I set the bino's up on a tripod and faced them at guttering across the street - with my eyes back a little from the eyepieces the guttering was vertically misaligned by more than it's depth through the two sides of the bino. Took about 1/8th turn on an adjustment screw to correct. Looking at a church cross, some horizontal misalignment was still evident, so I tightened both sides a fraction more to fix that (final touch up back on the guttering though). Images look much better now that I've got a binocular instead of a monocular. Can't wait to try them out tonight - I bought them to use as a light weight, wide field finder set. Thanks again for your help Eric.

[erick (Eric)]

Beaudy! It is so simple to get them functional with a little careful tweaking. But note this may not be a full collimation. If you hand them to someone else who has to adjust the IPD, the collimation may go out with that adjustment. Collimation across the full range of IPD is a more specialised service, as I understand it.