Pledge drive: microscope

[Samwise Wilson]

Everyone likes making small things bigger, let's be on the look out for a microscope!

A microscope could be handy for electronics inspection but also is just cool to look at samples / make your own samples. Simple clean fun.

I suggest starting a pledge drive for a decent second hand microscope, typically units come up for more than I can splurge for, but grouping together can ensure we get a great scope and not a cheapo one, along with optics to make it useful.

I'll throw in £50 and see where we go. Not looking for anything super fancy, a high power compound should do the trick, maybe a light pipe out for non intrusive camera and a fiber light if we get enough moola.

Occasionally these things do come up on various members radars, but not for sub £150.

Thoughts?

[Stanto]

What do you think about making our own? I remember Joe had the rudimentary design of one created previously, it would be a matter of increasing the capability of the component parts.

[J C]

Never quite got a design that wasnt still a pain in the ass. Little enthusiasm for revisiting it personally.

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[Samwise Wilson]

We could easily make a low-quality microscope, but a betterer one is betterer. To the point of it being hard/impossible to get a good deal from the raw materials, pickup up a 2nd hand one gives you alot that you would have to get for a DIY anyways. 

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[Tom Oldbury (Email #1)]

Something like a Mantis microscope would be a very nice addition, well suited to working on both small electronic parts and small materials.

Perhaps a good compromise, at least for now, is a high-resolution camera with a very good lens setup (including adjustable optical zoom) plus a full HD monitor. I've used a setup similar to this (it was a Mantis scope with a HDMI output) at work and found it pretty useful for electronics work. It would be a lot cheaper to make ourselves if we can get hold of say an older DSLR camera which supports remote control and HDMI out. (Completely unsure how good a DSLR is for high-performance macro work though, would need to be investigated.)

[Stanto]

Heh, considering Joe's reply, I agree.

[Samwise Wilson]

A inspection camera and microscope tend to be different things.

I can get us a decent document camera that would serve well as an inspection camera with the optical zoom desired.

A microscope with zoom optics gets expensive quick, however a standard scope with a home made eye piece to Nikon / canon adapter is easy and cheap.

[Tom Oldbury (Email #1)]

Yes please on the document camera. (Two would be great! One for craft bench and one for the electronics bench?) I may have a free 1080p monitor going spare for such a display. Does it have HDMI/DVI out?

[Tom Oldbury (Email #1)]

I found a microscope on the Dexion rack buried behind a lot of other stuff - it has been put into the moving pile. 

[Samwise Wilson]

The found microscope was a toy one with plastic optics :P

[Stanto]

Hack it!