SLR Lens tear down

For various reasons I ended up with a spare lens that does not actually fit my camera. Since I am interested in making a microscope mount for my new 450D, I decided to see whats inside.

With some care I got it to bits, and back together again!!

Some things to note if your thinking of doing this (Obviously the usual idiot clause applies):
Remove the rubber grips first they hide various goodies – a hatch to remove contacts and a tiny bit of highly structural tape in this case.
Mark any parts that look like they might rotate/ slide so at re-assembly you know exactly where they were.
Beware any adjustment rings that have a detent (clicky bit) – this is blatantly going to involve a spring propelled high velocity ball bearing that will make several bids for freedom – work under a cloth and use a load of grease to help reassembly

The most amazing thing is that the biggest section of optics is only held in place by some thin foil tape. As in the two halves of the lens body are TAPED together!

Iceland, bring your baby.

Got on the bus, and was pleasantly surprised to find not one but two small children. They more advanced years than last nights only equipped them with bigger lungs, worse their parents did not appear to even try and quench the torrent of squalling.

I spent the morning wandering around Reykjavik town center, it was pretty much deserted due to the “long weekend”. A pleasant place by all accounts, feels like eastern Europe and ex soviet states but without the undercurrent of poverty The buss drivers that were working appeared quite disgruntled. One almost got his bus round the corner sideways!

A most surprising feature of Iceland is their scaffolding – Its wooden planks held together with nails. There is health and safety god, he’s Norse! Go Iceland.

Hacking on Ice

CNC development ground to a massive halt on Sunday. Jeff and Rob, friends from university kindly roped me into a project they are working on – glacsweb. I didn’t know much about it and frankly still don’t, project context if very thin on the ground. Roughly it involves going to Iceland, installing a wireless sensor network in Europe’s biggest glacier and developing all the support tools and infrastructure to get the collected data onto the internet (Effectively a glacier with internet connectivity). After three days intensive hacking, im starting to get a better idea of what im in for.

The Probes containing sensor nodes are lowered down a hole cut in the glacier up to 30m below surface. The holes are cut with the biggest jet washer ive ever seen! 745×1500x600mm estimated at 200Kg plus fuel tank. Normally this would be helicoptered onto the ice. Our helicopter has backed out so we have to do it by person power. For this I have been constructing a winching tool to help pull things around on the ice. Jeff has built some very nice axle assemblies to bolt to the jet wash. We don’t really know how far it has to go or what the terrain is like, yesterday someone mentioned that there might be a river to cross?!?!

The hardware seems relatively together, but I suspect thats largely due to Rob and Jeff’s last minute input. From what I can gather, the software is in a highly sketchy, untrusted state. This is particularly bad in the case of the embedded code which once in the probes, and they are potted, cannot be changed or updated.

Today we meet some more of the geographers who are on the trip. Hopefully we can gain some more information. One of the most satisfying features of the project is one minute I am welding large bits of steel then in the blink of an eye soldering tiny surface mount components