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Help!. Screw trapped in Nikon mount

J

José L. Martínez

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Hi,

I've just finished a feature with nikon lenses, and while unmounting the nikon mount to swap it for the pl mount, one of the screws got trapped, the allen mark got to loose ant i cannot unscrew it with the key.

If tried the loctite trick and making a new flat head for it, but the bastard is too small and I'm a bit afraid of broking it.

Any help woudl be much apreciated.

Jose
 
two options really.

Safety, send it to red, they can get it off for you and put the PL back on.

Two, drill it out. the drill bit should be smaller than- NOT The flat head part, but the screw diameter of the other screws you've already taken out. You would drill right in the middle, when the head of the screw seperates from the body you can slip the nikon mount right off then us a pair of pliars to screw the body off the Red.
 
nikon nuggets

nikon nuggets

I went through this experience.... I was stuck with the head of one of the nikon mount screws stripped and unable to unscrew. I was unable to remove the mount without drilling the screw, which is what I ended up doing. Basically all you need to do is drill the tip of the screw off without damaging the mount or the camera, the key here is to have a drill bit that is the 'same size or smaller' then the shaft of the screw that is on the nikon mount. When drilling it is critical that you do not 'go too far' as you need enough of a nub left on the remaining part of the screw (the part that's still imbedded in the camera) to remove using, (in my case) needle nose pliers. You only need to drill in as far as the head of the screw itself, at which point the head should just 'snap off'..... This whole thing is a very delicate procedure!!!!! that I would NOT recommend doing if you have the option to send the camera into red. In my situation we needed to be shooting again asap so I did what I did and it luckily worked out fine.

The lesson learnt here is to buy some torque screws for the nikon mount, and use those instead... I have NO IDEA why red just doesn't ship the mount with torque screws in the first place... cost I suppose

On a similar note to those using nikon lenses... I once had a lens 'jam' on the mount and stay permanently affixed to the camera... I literally had to 'break' the lens off the camera to remove it... luckily it was a very old and cheap lens which was surprisingly undamaged in the removal process, however my nikon mount was....

I discovered an interesting little trick here, as I thought I'd end up having to purchase a whole new nikon mount from red, not the case. It turns out that the nikon mount is 'one part steel plate' and one part 'nikon ring'. My lens jam experience destroyed my nikon ring... I did find a replacement nikon ring which fit, it was from a 'nikon macro tube' and it was an exact match...

I've been pretty impressed with how tough the red is... these sound like horror stories but for the most part it's the nikon lenses... worst case scenario is that your out a nikon lens and mount, which isn't 'that expensive' to replace if you consider the alternatives....

good luck

John
 
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