Doing The Most Impossible Thing: Assembling Summarit 5cm aperture blades

[Moriturii]

Ooooooooook.

So, after two days of testing, and coming up empty handed, who has any tips and tricks of how to assemble the 15 aperture blades of a Summarit 5cm lens? I must be missing something basic in putting them together.

I've tried to arrange them kind of one laying on top of another, and going around in a circle, after removing the optical head piece and the basket that holds the aperture ring down and moves them around.

One big problem is once you start coming full circle, you have to start tucking in the aperture blades underneath the first one you put down, and that is harder then trying to understand women.

Tips?

 

[Vickko]

Yep, after you cover all the holes, you have to now start sliding blades under other blades and hope it all stays in place. And you are trying to move a pin into a hole, blind.

Some tricks that worked for me:

1. use toothpicks to press down gently and hold the blade that you don't want to move in place. Press down at the pin of the blade that is on top of the one that you are moving. The one beneath will be held down by the blade that you are trying to position

2. sometimes glue or something to hold the toothpicks, to free up a finger

3. patience, maybe either caffeine or alcohol

4. remember - staff at Wetzlar did this 8 hours a day and I don't know of excessive suicides or increased incidence of psychopathy. It isn't impossible. Just tricky.

5. rest. Repeated failures can lead to frustration. Let your brain process what you've attempted, and the next attempts will get better.

I've done most of my blade work on Nikon RF lenses.

Good luck

Vick

 

[Moriturii]

Going back to the cave, salute.

 

[_goodtimez]

How about using a light magnet to hold them together ?
The danger of course is to magnetize them but there must be a way to demagnetize them using a small electrical coil done with thin wire and voltage in the 5 v range coming from a battery.

 

[BobYIL]

Doing The Most Impossible Thing?

Wait until you try the hexagonal version of the Summitar with 12 spherical (!) blades operating in two layers but mounted on a single layer...

 

[miloss]

Summitar 5cm Aperture Blades

Summitar 5cm Aperture Blades

Hello everyone,

I have that same problem, only my Summitar has 10 aperture blades that I dislocated by accident while attempting to loosen a sticky aperture ring.
Everything went fine, until I tried to put it all back together, when I accidentally blew some air into the lens and the blades went up...
I tried laying them back int their guiding holes but I can put only 5 out of 10 before all 10 hole become covered.
Can anyone help?

 

[Moto-Uno]

Peter

 

[Monochrom]

Hi,

Blades are very demanding in patience.

You can install 12, 13 blades easily but the last ones are the most difficult because as you slip them into ther position they will push up the others making lose their position.

To prevent that you must push them down into place as you slip the new blade.

The most straight common tweezers will do the job.

 

[ChrisN]

Joe had a trick that involved compressed air. 🙂

 

[BernardL]

How about using a light magnet to hold them together ? The danger of course is to magnetize them but there must be a way to demagnetize them

I would not bet my lens on that.

A trick I have read about, but not tested myself: wet the clean blades blades in clean isopropyl alcohol. Capillarity will help keep them together. When done, wait for alcohol to evaporate (takes time for alcohol trapped between blades).

Good luck

 

[jonmanjiro]

A trick I have read about, but not tested myself: wet the clean blades blades in clean isopropyl alcohol. Capillarity will help keep them together. When done, wait for alcohol to evaporate (takes time for alcohol trapped between blades).

I've used this trick, but its not ideal because it can leave hard to remove ugly looking marks on the blades as the alcohol evaporates (well, it did on the aperture blades of my S-mount Nikkor-S 5cm F1.4 lens). Now I just stick to patiently holding the already installed blades in their positions using a cotton bud (Q-tip) while gently sliding in the new blades with tweezers.

 

[Dralowid]

The most effective trick that I have employed in the past was to very carefully wrap it all up and post to the most sympathetic camera repair man that I know. No tears, no sweat and only a little money.

 

[Richard G]

Yep, after you cover all the holes, you have to now start sliding blades under other blades and hope it all stays in place. And you are trying to move a pin into a hole, blind.

Some tricks that worked for me:

1. use toothpicks to press down gently and hold the blade that you don't want to move in place. Press down at the pin of the blade that is on top of the one that you are moving. The one beneath will be held down by the blade that you are trying to position

2. sometimes glue or something to hold the toothpicks, to free up a finger

3. patience, maybe either caffeine or alcohol

4. remember - staff at Wetzlar did this 8 hours a day and I don't know of excessive suicides or increased incidence of psychopathy. It isn't impossible. Just tricky.

5. rest. Repeated failures can lead to frustration. Let your brain process what you've attempted, and the next attempts will get better.

I've done most of my blade work on Nikon RF lenses.

Good luck

Vick

Number 5. above is profound advice for anyone with a difficult physical task to complete.

 

[02Pilot]

I've used this trick, but its not ideal because it can leave hard to remove ugly looking marks on the blades as the alcohol evaporates (well, it did on the aperture blades of my S-mount Nikkor-S 5cm F1.4 lens). Now I just stick to patiently holding the already installed blades in their positions using a cotton bud (Q-tip) while gently sliding in the new blades with tweezers.

The trick to cleaning the blades of those marks is to put a tiny bit of graphite powder on a Q-tip (lightly moistened with Ronsonol) and carefully rub the blades clean once they're locked in place.