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[Hai]

Hi,
What grease or lubricant should I use for the focusing helical in my lenses?
Thanks!
Hai

[Steve_s]

A lot of people recommend synthetic bicycle grease (no specific brand), so this is probably your best bet. I haven't tried any yet, but intend to soon.
 
What I'm actually using myself at present is Castrol BNS, which is a Bentone based hig

[Glenn]

The Nyogel Damping products work very well, but you have to choose the grade required by experiment. I also found that the 795A was far too heavy - if one packed the whole helix with grease - just placing 3 or 4 dabs around the helix will give a good mo

[Steve_s]

When I tried the Nyogel, I certainly did pack the helical. With a multistart thread I always want to be sure that all the threads have plenty of grease - dry aluminium threads have a nasty tendency to pick-up which can be very bad news indeed!
 
Wh

[Markamra]

If it's not too late. I go with the first suggestion of synthetic bicycle grease. I can't be much use with a brand name because I'm in the UK and use Halfords (National UK retailer) own brand. It's a red coloured general purpose silicone cycle gre

[Glenn]

Steve,
 
Like you I found a/the UK supplier of Nye products - but only after I had increased Microtools, European profit margins! I have recently moved house, so I cannot easily lay my hands on the Nye products/ reference numbers. A few years b

[Commando303]

I've recently acquired some molybdenum disulfide (moly) grease, and I just love it. Petroleum jelly (Vaseline) or silicone lubricant ? the two are very similar ? work well enough and are easily found, but they can be a little tough to use in lower t

[Steve_roberts]

I've successfully used Castrolease LM on several lenses. It's a GP grease, cheap in the UK and readily obtainable. Being specified for automotive wheelbearings (where you don't want it to run away if it gets hot) it shouldn't be a problem in len

[Steve_s]

As Glenn suggests, if it works for you, then keep using it, Steve, but a word of warning: I gave up using Castrol LM in wheel-bearings many, many years ago, because it suffered VERY badly from oil separation. This is bad news for the brakes in