Mitutoyo PH-A14 Optical comparitor entirely too dim

Hi, everyone, long time reader, first time poster.

We have a bunch of comparitors in our shop. The one I generally use, because it's by far the best, is an old Scherr Tumico. Unfortunately, it's almost all the way across the shop and is often being used.

Ten feet away from my work bench is a Mitutoyo PH-A14. It's all hooked up, but it never gets used because the only way you can see the shadow is literally to get a big cardboard box and put it over your head and over the hood and even then you can barely see the part. The only way I can see it being useful would be in a room where you could turn off all the lights and make it completely dark. The Tumico could probably be used in sunshine and still show the part pretty bright.

Does anyone have experience with these units? If so, is the dim screen normal? Or did somebody do something silly like put the wrong bulb in mine?

It may be an incorrect bulb, dirty mirrors/lenses, a misaligned light source, or any combination of the above.

Definitely something not right, I was looking at buying this same model but the seller was having an issue with bulbs blowing out continuously.

I would have a tech come in and check it out. Not sure if yours already has LED lighting in it but there is an upgrade for these to switch them over so you can get a much better, cooler, longer lasting light source in there. It wasn't cheap though, I think they quoted me like $2K to retrofit the PH A14 I was looking at.

Yeah, I disassembled one for that reason, among others. The reflector is a thin, poorly protected piece of what appears to be cheap plated aluminum. Between that, and general mechanical cheapness of the unit, I decided not to ever use this series of Mitutoyo comparators again. You could probably replace the lamp and reflector, but that would be like putting $3000 rims on a 1991 Chevy Spectrum.