Usb Microscope Stand 3d Print

[Vernie Montagna]

PLAis the filament of choice. Current formulations are very good, reliable and easy to print. I personally use black esun PLA+. I have all of my printers dialed in for the best quality I can get using it. There are a lot of variables that influence the print quality. The slicer (cura, prusa, etc), PLA brand, PLA color, printer, nozzle, extruder, etc. all must adjusted accordingly.

I believe that the body should be PLA. All other parts can be done using ABS. However, ABS is prone to

Warping and shrinkage making the assembly complicated.

I print parts separately. Some massive printers like the prusa XL can accommodate all parts on the print plate. The advantage is that you have everything done in about 12 hrs. In my opinion filament layer adhesion may be compromised when you do this. The beginning of the layer will be cold and hard by the time the nozzle reaches the end of it. Enclosing the printer is not recommended for PLA. In addition, if the print fails, you lose all of the models. Even though my voron 300x300 can accommodate all, I currently print three times. The body, stand and drawer, and everything else.

I think speed really matters for those thinking about production for sale, but for the average microscope builder I totally agree that 3D printing is now reliable enough that the OpenFlexure works well on a low cost 3D printer.

This is a good point. I think the shrinkage of ABS is likely to be a killer, but PET-G is worth more investigation. Tech4Trade made microscopes with recycled PET filament, this worked but they had some issues with brittle prints, this tended to be due to moisture content during their own filament recycling process as far as I know.

In the past we have done some fatigue tests where the stage is cycled repeatedly for months. Doing this in different temperatures and humidities with different materials would be interesting. But also it is time and space consuming so would need budget.

I have tried PETG, it prints fine but I have not tested it extensively yet. I have one PLA and one PETG that are destined for testing in an incubator, but they have not made it there yet. In handling, the PET looks and feels more supple but there are some instances where it seems to have been more brittle and I have cracked parts.

The standard and even the ABS-like resins are just not flexible enough to withstand bending for flexures. They are too brittle. So after some experimentation, came up with a mix of 60% standard (cuz cheap), 30% ABS like and 10% elastic (esun eresin elastic)

If you are not building new, you can improve the usability of a v6 microscope with the new illumination dovetail and condenser mount that are backwards compatible. The condenser is much narrower, which allows the sample clips to be alongside the condenser and gives really good access to the slide.

Thank you, but my contribution was tiny. @j.stirling has done a huge quantity of work, both in the changes that you can see and also under the hood to make the code neater and so easier to understand and customise. The Upright microscope prototype would have been much harder without all of that.

I have been going through the printed parts list to print one of these.

For anyone else building it, in the Print the plastic parts tab of the instructions, there are parts of the base missing.

There is the main base part microscope_stand.stl, and a part listed as motor_driver_case_sangaboard.stl. This part does not exist in v7, but the microscope stand will need the tray for the Raspberry Pi and also a tray to go on top of that to hold an Arduino Nano and motor drivers. This is shown in the posts OpenFlexure Microscope v7.0.0-Alpha is nearing. The parts needed I think are:

pi_stand.stl for the tray for the Pi

nano_converter_plate.stl for the tray to hold the Arduino Nano and motor controllers

nano_converter_plate_gripper.stl but I have not printed it yet, so not sure exactly where it goes.

There must be a place I could link directly to the STLs, but currently I find them through the build artefacts of the tagged release on GitLab.

image1238157 8.91 KB

Click on at the right hand side and select build. That gets you a .zip file with all of the STLs

Regarding the base, yes nano and three ICs. I see how it fits together now, the drawer and nano plate are very tidy. Has anyone got it all fitting in the standard height stand including the wires or would you recommend printing the taller stand instead?

It is a long print time in total, overall they are big parts.

For the base, there is only one height for the V7.0.0alpha, and it is designed to fit everything in. Part of the alpha test is whether we actually can fit it!

This is concerning. Do you have more details. Are the nuts turning in the trap? Did you first pull the nut up into the hex seat and tighten. Here is a cutaway diagram of the nut traps for mounting main body.

Taking microscopy pictures with a smartphone is quite common at the teaching lab. Students often use their favorite electronical device for documenting observations and illustrating their journals or their Instagram feed.

Taking pictures directly through the eyepiece of a microscope isn't that difficult, to be honest. However, taking good pictures is somehow a bit tricky. The main issues are often stability and shutter lag (in other words, the delay between pushing the trigger button on the phone and the actual time the picture is taken). Practically talking, one must hold the phone stable at the right position so that the camera lens is aligned with the ocular lens and the right distance from the lens, and long enough so that the picture does not turn out blurry.

Browsing your favorite shops online, it does not take long before you find smartphone holders for the car, bike, kitchen bench, telescope, or ... microscope. Such small devices cost a couple hundred Norwegian crowns and are usually made of 100% plastic. But then, if it is just plastic, why not 3D-printing it instead of buying it?

Apparently, someone else has had the same question in mind, and come with a 3D model that fits exactly the purpose (picture to the left). This original design was published by martinlessard100 on Thingiverse, and can be found here. All files are free to download. It is made of 7 parts including 3 screws, may be printed all together in a working day and does not cost much more than 30-40 crowns in PLA filament.

Of course we had to try it... and acknowledge that the model is both simple and great. However, this particular design was a bit too narrow for our Leica DM750 microscopes which ocular pieces are approximately 40mm wide. The main part of the smartphone holder thus had to be rescaled using Tinkercad to fit our equipment. A few minor modifications were added, and now, it works nicely at BIO! (NB: you may download the customized version using this link).

Hi,

I just designed a microscope stand, which would take near 20 hours on my MK2S with the "0.20mm NORMAL" profile. As there is little detail on the model, I switched to "0.35mm FAST", started the print and went out. When I came back home, there was a HUGE mess and the hotend jammed. As someone calcualted here -tips-slic3r-settings-kisslicer-model-repair--f12/slic3r-0-35mm-fast-profile-t5603.html , this profile can't possibly work as the extrusion flow is far too high for the E3D V6 hotend. I wonder why the put such nonsense in there - after all its Slic3r Prusa Edition! After taking apart extruder, hotend... and cleaning up the mess, I modified the speed settings and extrusion width to a flow of max. 10 mm^3/s. The print ran through (Prusa's silver PLA), but I got some delaminations on the top layer (see images). Anyone has an idea what causes this?

So as the original Prusa 0.35 mm FAST profile is nonsense, does anyone have a tip how to achieve fastest possible printing for parts not requiring fine details (and preferably the 0.4 mm nozzle)? As I understand it, the hotend flow is the limiting factor, so mounting a larger nozzle not necessarily gets more throughput. Mounting a Volcano seems to be a major undertaking with other drawbacks (like general print quality). Is there a working fast profile somewhere out there?

- Printing at 3.0 can be done if the model is simple, but I use a 2.6 layer height for my go to fast profile.

- Infill %15 percent, maybe 30% if the model is very complex w/ respect to bridges

- Have two working printers, even if the second one has a small print area. That way you are slicing, prepping, cleaning, sanding parts while other parts are being printed.

- Figure out a way to not have supports. Super glue and a soldering iron set at 190C for plastic welding can be faster method than printing w/ supports.

I think a second printer would be a good idea, I'd try putting the volcano on that, but on the other hand I have way too much stuff laying around and I really try to reduce my equipment....

Maybe one could make a swappable printhead, one with the regular hotend and 0.4 mm nozzle and another with volcano and 0.8 mm. All electrical connections would need to go to a connector (Motor: 4; PINDA 4; Fans 6? Filament sensor 4? hotend 4 makes 22) so one could easily swap it. Of course this increases weight and decreases mechanical stability, but would save the hassle of maintaining two different printers.

Gears: How do you make gears? I used the woodgears generator for some tests, import DXF in Alibre Design and linear extrude to make straight gears (I did not yet try helical or herringbone teeth). So far tried 2, 3 and 4 mm tooth spacing, 3 will probably work best.

I stopped using 0.35mm height long ago.

I'm using 0.30mm. And I think I will go to 0.25mm as with new Linear Advance feature, the speed can be increased and the maximum volumetric speed reach quite easily as I use PETG mainly and target 10mm3/s.

Below are my settings. I still have to improve top solid infill (as I still having issues with large flat surface like you) and support.

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