Customer Reviews

Meade Laser Collimator 1.25-Inch

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Well built and is a must for the Lightbridge, as soon as you use it you can see why you have to have it, it gets you way closer than using your eyes. My only complaint is that you have a little bit of lazer movement due to slop in your focuser.

I bought one of these gadgets new last year, and tried using it out in the field. This model has the diagonal so you can see it from the back of your scope, a great feature, by the way.

When I plugged it in, I couldn't get the dot into the diagonal, let alone, center it. I eyeballed my alignment beforehand and when I plugged in the laser, it would be way off. So, I adjusted my optics to get the dot in the center. When I did that, my mirrors were so far out I could only see about a quarter of the mirror in the focuser.

So, I gave up and did it the old fashioned way.

One day, I decided to try again. This time I was in the garage and set everything up. During this process, I just happened to rotate the laser in the focuser and the dot moved! Turns out, right from the factory, my unit came off-center. Whoever assembled it never centered it. There are adjustment screws so you can adjust the center, but by that time I was frustrated and gave up for the day. That was late last year and I haven't got back to it yet. I still give this unit four stars because I know that when I get the laser to actually point the right way, I'm sure it will work just fine. I just think Meade needs to work a little on their quality control, especially for something as simple as this. Still recommended.

...and in comparison this is a cheap collimator.

Out of the box the collimator made viewing through my 12" Dobsonian worse than just aligning the optics by eye. There are no instructions mentioning you'll need to align the unit nor how to perform such an alignment. Once I did align the collimator, it did't hold alignment from one use to the next.

After being turned on for more than a minute or two the laser point would fade out completely. I purchased new batteries and tried to change the batteries in the unit that were installed when I received it but they would not come out. After a little coaxing the first two of three batteries slid out but the third battery would not slide out. Two hours of work finally got the third battery removed but the collimator was almost destroyed in the process.

In all, I did not get a single good collimation out of this junk before it was trash.

If you spent your hard earned money on a good scope don't short-change yourself with a mediocre collimation tool like this.