Who wouldn’t want to have a scanning electron microscope (SEM)? If you’re the person behind the ProjectsInFlight channel on YouTube, you certainly do. In a recent video it’s explained how he got his mittens on a late 1980s, early 1990s era JEOL JSM-5200 SEM that was going to be scrapped. This absolute unit of a system comes with everything that’s needed to do the imaging, processing and displaying on the small CRT. The only problem with it was that it was defective, deemed irreparable and hence the reason why it was headed to the scrap. Could it still be revived against all odds?
The good news was that the unit came with the manual and schematics, and it turns out there’s an online SEM community of enthusiasts who are more than happy to help each other out. One of these even had his own JSM-5200 which helped with comparing the two units when something wasn’t working. Being an SEM, the sample has to be placed in a high vacuum, which takes a diffusion vacuum pump, which itself requires a second vacuum pump, all of which requires voltages and electronics before even getting to the amplification circuitry.
Since the first problem was that this salvaged unit wasn’t turning on, it started with the power supply and a blown fuse. This led to a shorted transformer, bad DC-DC converters, a broken vacuum pump, expired rubber hoses and seals, and so on, much of which can be attributed simply to the age of the machine. Finding direct replacements was often simply impossible to very expensive, necessitating creative solutions along with significant TLC.
Although there are still some small issues with for example the CRT due to possibly bad capacitors, overall the SEM seems to be in working condition now, which is amazing for a unit that was going to be trashed.
Thanks to [Hans] for the tip.
Who the heck would throw that away?? The console reminds me a little of the Apple Lisa II
Corporations.
Hospitals! I used to know a bunch of biomedical engineering department heads in hospitals around me, and every single one had a storeroom of scrapped equipment that was scrapped because declaring it unfixable (by the hospital team) was the only way to get budgets for replacement. I would pick through it and choose items, give them a letter from my erstwhile company saying they were unrepairable (by me, a professional certified on something vaguely similar) and help them clear them out via different means. Usually I could rebuild stuff to good if not great, and then sell it on the early iteration of ebay (circa 2003). Sold an AO ‘tome to Venezuela for $5,000 once. Good times.
Stuff gets thrown away all the time. People don’t have the time or budget to repair them. We have some gear in the lab that requires a program running under XP to make it work. Our machine shop has equipment that depends on a PC-AT board. You can see how the first failure would be “time to buy a new one”.
Yeah, and then hopefully these f**ls will realize what they had.
Modern tech gets so hyped much, but in practice it’s full of bloat and lacks the elegance and simplicity of tech from 30+ years ago.
Also, it’s often depending on an unneccesary online-connection and a time-limited license.
By contrast, let’s just look at commercial Unix systems from the 90s.
They had boring GUIs but they were logically structured and fuctional.
Same is true for Windows software from the 90s. Not sexy, but functional.
I have had several instances where the fud has caused equipment to be tossed. “We can’t repair it, it will be out of calibration.” “The mfg won’t back it”. Or to have it repaired through official channels results in a cost so high that replacing equipment is a more sensible option.
It is great to see people with the knowledge and ability to repair and understand the equipment they are working with.
Thank you for the video and awesome job and bringing that equipment back to life.
I have the opposite problem — my company has gear that people refuse to retire or throw away. And it is my team’s job to make things work in a modern environment
So you have a job. Brilliant!
Anything that resembles a Space1999 prop is definitely worthy of saving in my book.
Oh this takes me back to a Science competition held at Va. Tech probably around 1985 time period. We got a demonstration in the Biology dept. from a Grad who prepared biology samples (mostly I think small rodent brains) on a micro-tome (think deli slicer made of small sharpened diamonds). The samples would float out onto a little water resevoir (‘cuz of being so thin). These would get mounted or temporarily placed on a metal “stick” with holes in it (little wells with copper mesh). And Electrons would shower down through the wells/copper mesh onto the little fluorescent screen. NO Crt for that unit at least. It was all eyeballs and film camera.
microtomes are how any pathology service in a hospital processes most tissue (biopsies, etc) for exam under the microscope. I agree- the first time I saw one it was so bizarre and seemingly low tech but a perfect example of mature tech that is dead simple and just works. It just floats the 1cell layer thin slice and you use a slide to sort of pick it up and it sticks down. Cool stuff.
A former classmate of mine was at a softball game when one of the players was injured.
IIRC, one of the teams had a couple of pathologists on it. When the crowd was asked if there was a doctor available, they responded,
“He’s not sliced thin enough!”
B^)
Ah, I’ve worked on the Hacker (yes, that was the company name) full-body microtome! Histopathology taken out to the ball game sounds lovely.
Hacker was a great company, by the way, I was certified on almost all of their equipment, some made in NJ and some imports from Meisei on Japan.
Somehow I’d wager someone has already been doing this for a while, But I figure that wet/slice/mount could make for some rather unique “decals” for things in the lab?
I used one of these when I was a grad student. When it worked, it worked pretty well, but it was always having annoying issues, most often the electron gun filament burning out and having to be replaced. The model I used had a white phosphor monitor, though, and I think the control panel was slightly different.
Friend of mine has, I think, five SEMs he’s got working over the last few years. He is the president of a museum that collects and restores to working old mainframe computers. Coolest guy I know.
I had a 40 year career working with SEMs and FIBs. Nice troubleshooting, ProjectsInFlight! And great perseverance in peeling back the onion of problems in different subsystems.