Stylus inspection recommendation

shelbygt

AK Subscriber
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What are folks using to inspect stylus on their cartridges? A good, strong magnifying glass? Microscope?
I’d like to start giving my stylus a good inspection and not replace just for the heck of it.
 
I stumbled into a 30 power microscope that is true stereo (two eyepieces, two objective lenses), and I find it very effective; the low power gives a lot of depth of field, and the stereoscopic view makes it much easier to comprehend what I'm seeing.

That said, it would be really nice if it was 50x instead of 30x.
 
I’m going to look for a stereo microscope. Makes more sense. Will be nice to really look the stylus over. Thanks!
 
That scope is not going to get you what you need to see the stylus wear facets or patterns. The magnification needs to be at least 100x and side lighting is required. This will get you to the stylus though. A nice loupe will do that for a bit less money.
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I am sure he meant a monocular jeweler's loop.
You will need about 100x and some lighting as suggested above.
There is a thread on creating your own. I will post the link later, unless someone else does first.
There is a bit of a learning curve to the actual inspection process as well. There is more to it than a casual glance. I have gone back to look at styli multiple times as I became more comfortable with the differences a small change in focus, orientation and lighting can make.

Here is the scope

It doesn't have to be stereo. A couple of desk lamps up close and on either side of the inspection table on the scope works quite well.
 
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Really need 150x minimum to evaluate wear. My scope goes 50 to 200x. Even so I need to move a strong flashlight around to see the wear patterns. They're very small near the apex of the tip.
 
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Tiver,
I tried to read through it but the article Is 10 years old and most of the links are dead ends. Is there a finished product that works with valid links?
 
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Tiver,
I tried to read through it but the article Is 10 years old and most of the links are dead ends. Is there a finished product that works with valid links?

Probably not. The thread ended up running off the rails a little.

Here is an Inspection PDF from Shure Even this isn't as helpful as one would like. Focus, lighting, perspective and orientation are critical to seeing the wear marks. It's easy to over or under estimate wear if the stylus isn't looked at just right.

The setup is not difficult to get together. I have a simple laboratory microscope and 2 desk lamps. One lamp for each side.

This kind of lamp
flex.jpg or similar

I looked on ebay and see there are used student scopes that should work.
Copy paste this - " Parco Student Microscope " - into google and several ebay listings should pop up

This is just an example that might work. One challenge is having enough room on the object table. Most of these scopes are made for slides. Styli and cartridges are bulkier and if the distance between the lens and the object table can't be made great enough to accommodate what one wants to look at, then it won't work.

Here is a picture of one that came up that looks like it has a fair bit of available space. Notice that the microscope body moves up and down to focus. Some only move the object table up and down to focus and thereby can't accommodate objects much thicker than slides.

scope.jpg

There are also small hand held USB camera scopes. They can provide interesting pictures, but getting useful wear info from them is a challenge I haven't figured out yet. Here is a stylus shot from one that cost about $20 on Amazon.

Fri Jan 25 17-27-43.jpg

From the top....this is an unused Shure Hyper Elliptical. This is approaching the possibility to evaluate wear, but we shouldn't be persuaded into thinking so just yet.
Fri Jan 25 17-05-43.jpg

This is a picture from a cell phone through the lens of the lab scope I have (not the above stylus). This shows reflective wear facets, but they can be deceiving and need to be looked at from a couple different perspectives or foci.

stanton2.jpg

Same stylus as above with a little different lighting and focus
light stanton.jpg

The first picture makes the stylus look worse than the second one. That's why I go back and look several times. I don't want to mistake moderately worn from heavily worn.

That is really all it takes to get started. Once you have the pieces, it's just about getting a little experience with the views, focus and lighting. I have found many of the styli I get on used tables have only moderate wear. A couple were very minor wear. Some were toast.
 
It's not easy getting good pics, these were taken with an inexpensive USB microscope attached to my computer, I forget what the power factor was. I believe 100X, obviously still not enough to see wear or even profile.

The first 2 are my Grace F8-L10', the last my Grace Custom.

Screenshot_2017-12-03-15-08-51.png
Screenshot_2017-12-03-15-08-28.png
Screenshot_2017-12-03-10-20-11.png
 
I have a very nice Zeiss scope that I bought from a university auction. It even has the capability to attach a camera, but the required adapter (last time I checked) would be more money than I paid for the scope itself. As has already been discussed, lighting and perspective are critical to actually "see" anything relevant regarding wear.

I used to use one of those "clicker" counters to keep track of how many album sides I played just as a crude estimate of hours of use on the stylus, but then I got into cart/headshell swapping, and that kind of went out the window, so now I just do visual inspections with the scope. It's difficult to judge wear based on hours of use anyways, as different manufacturers have different recommendations for lifespan of a stylus--I've seen as low as 500hrs and as high as 1000hrs, so who knows?
 
What I’m gleaning from reading and your generous input is I need to look for a simple microscope with a minimum of 200x. 400x would be better with enough room for the stylus.
Light should come in from both sides of the stylus.
Wonder if LED light would be better or worse?
 
Stationary lighting doesn't work very well for me. The only way I can really tell what's going on is by viewing up around 200x and using stationary light combined with moving a high lumens LED flashlight (Surefire, Fenix, Streamlight, etc.) around the radius of the diamond. Its not easy but you get a much better idea of the wear patterns by moving the light source.
 
Found an old gem with 60. 90 and 475 local. Quite a jump from 90 to 475. Would 475 be too much?
 
475. I would say yes just based on the reading and using I’ve done but I only go to 200x. Shures scope goes to 200x. Hope they new what they were doing.
 
Would 475 be too much?

475X probably is a bit much. My main concern with that lens would be the clearance between the lens and the stage--as to whether there is enough room to even get a cart in there for inspection. Higher powered lenses can have a long barrel and might not work for much else other than slides.
 
My scope has 100x, 400x. 1000x (10x eyepiece, 10x subject), (10x eye, 40x subject), (10xeye, 100x subject)

The 10x eye , 10x subject is what the pix above are from. 40x subject is extremely tight and I don't find it useful. 1000x....forget it. I don't have any issues with the stationary lighting. They are both LED, but just regular A19 bulbs.

I tried with a bright LED flashlight by moving it around, but the desk lamps were really much more revealing. Better general light flooding the stylus, but sourced from the sides evoked the proper reflection.
In the original link to sparky's scope, he used puck lights mounted to some kind of box or case or holder......nothing fancy, just to hold the light sources on either side of the stylus. The small desk lamps work fine for me.
 
Ima go with an American Optical One Fifty. An oldie but a goody. 100x, 450x and 1000x with 10x eyepiece. Guy says there’s a good 1 1/2” clearance. We’ll see. I’ll play with lighting.
The higher power usually requires the lens be very very close to the diamond limiting the view. Let us know how it works out, post pics if able.
 
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