Cleaning aperture blades on Minolta 50mm f/1.4 af

[cramej]

I've gotten this far after having already disassembled the other half of the lens and realizing I can't get to the aperture blades. Does the spring ring need to come out to get to the blades? And does it come out as a unit or in pieces?

 

[gone]

Aren't we looking at the blades in that photo? Or is there glass that I'm not seeing? If that's the blades, you're good to go for cleaning them.

 

[cramej]

Yes, but I need to get to both sides of the blades so what looks like an aperture assembly needs to come out.

 

[Andrew K]

cut through the glue you can see (3 spots) and take the big circlip out - the whole aperture unit will come out in 1 unit.

It's far easier if you take the rear of the lens apart when putting the cleaned aperture unit back into the lens

If you get stuck PM me - I've done a few of them over the years...

 

[cramej]

Thanks

 

[Andrew K]

I forgot to mention - scribe a line on the side of the lens and the top of the aperture unit with the tip of a screwdriver - that way it's easy to set the aperture back in the correct position.

Don't worry if it's already out - you can use the glue remnants to line things up. Moving the aperture unit backwards & forwards adjusts the physical aperture size - you can get +/- 2/3 of a stop adjustment

 

[hoffy]

Don't do what I did and completely unscrew the helicoil, which I did on my 28mm F2.8 AF. It took me ages to screw it back together (damn multi start threads).

 

[cramej]

Yep, already did that when I took apart the other half of the lens. Only took about 15 minutes of futzing around to get it right.