Optical Microscope Resolves Down To 40 Nanometers

June 2, 2021 by Al Williams 12 Comments

Optical microscopes depend on light, of course, but they are also limited by that same light. Typically, anything under 200 nanometers just blurs together because of the wavelength of the light being used to observe it. However, engineers at the University of California San Diego have published their results using a hyperbolic metamaterial composed of silver and silica to drive optical microscopy down to below 40 nanometers. You can find the original paper online, also.

The technique also requires image processing. Light passing through the metamaterial breaks into speckles that produce low-resolution images that can combine to form high-resolution images. This so-called structured illumination technique isn’t exactly new, but previous techniques allowed about 100-nanometer resolution, much less than what the researchers were able to find using this material.

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Repurpose A Monitor Arm As Microscope Mount

May 16, 2021 by Chris Lott 12 Comments

Being a bit shocked at the prices of articulating arm microscope mounts, not to mention the shipping fees to the UK, [CapTec] realized they looked substantially similar to your typical computer monitor arm mount. Thinking he could adapt a monitor arm for much less money, he fired up FreeCAD and started designing.

[CapTec] is using this to support his Amscope / Eakins camera-equipped trinocular microscope, but notes that the same mechanical bracket / focus rack interface is found on binocular ‘scopes as well. He observes that the mount is no more stable than your desk or lab bench, so keep that in mind.

Ultimately the monitor arm set him back less than $40, and all told he reckons the whole thing was under $55. Based on prices he’s been researching online, this represents a savings of well over $200. In his calculations, the shipping fee comprised quite a hefty percentage of the total cost. We wonder if they are artificially high due to coronavirus — if so, the make / buy price comparison might yield different results in the future.

This type of project is a perfect use-case for a home 3D printer — making your own parts when the normal supply channels are unavailable or overpriced. Are articulating arms that are purpose-built for microscopes significantly different than those designed for big computer monitors? If you know, please comment down below.

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3D-Printed Laser Scanning Confocal Microscope Measures Microns

April 26, 2021 by Dan Maloney 15 Comments

When one thinks about microscopy, it seems to be mostly qualitative. Looking at a slide teeming with bacteria or protozoans is less about making measurements and more about recognizing features and describing their appearance. Not all microscopes are created equal, though, with some being far more optimized for making fine measurements of the microscopic realm.

This 3D-printed confocal laser scanning microscope is a good example of an instrument for measuring really small stuff. As [Zachary Tong] points out, confocal scanning microscopy uses a clever optical setup to collect light from a single, well-defined point within a sample; rather than getting an image of all the points within a two-dimensional focal plane, the scanning function moves the focal point around through the sample in three dimensions, capturing spatial data to go along with the optical information.

The stage of [Zach]’s microscope is based on OpenFlexure’s Delta Stage, an open-source, 3D-printed delta-bot motion control platform that’s capable of positioning samples with sub-micron precision. Above the stage are the deceptively simple optics, with a laser diode light source, an objective lens, and a photodiode detector behind a pinhole. The detector feeds a homebrew trans-impedance amplifier that captures data at millions of points as the sample is moved through a small three-dimensional space. All that data gets crunched to find the Z-axis position corresponding to the maximum intensity at each point.

It takes a while to gather all this data — up to several days for even a small sample — but it works pretty well. [Zach] already has some ideas for reducing noise and speeding up the scan time; perhaps a stage based on DVD parts like this one would be faster than the delta stage. We look forward to seeing his improvements.

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Modified 3D Printer Makes A Great Microscope, Too

February 26, 2021 by Lewin Day 15 Comments

A false-color polarimetric image of sugar crystals floating in water.

Look past the melty plastic bits, and your average 3D printer is just a handy 3-axis Cartesian motion platform. This makes them useful for all kinds of things, and as [E/S Pronk] shows us, they can easily be modified into an automated polarimetric microscope!

The microscope build actually took two forms. One, a regular digital microscope any of us may be familiar with, using a C-mount microscope lens fitted to a Raspberry Pi HQ camera. The other, a polarimetric microscope, using an Allied Vision Mako G-508B POL polarimetric camera instead, with the same microscope lens. The polarimetric camera takes stunning false-color images, where the color values correspond to the polarization of the light bouncing off an object. It’s incredibly specialized hardware with a matching price tag, but [E/S Pronk] hopes to build a cheaper DIY version down the line, too.

3D printers make excellent microscopes, as they’re designed to make small precise movements and are easily controlled via G-Code. We’ve seen them used for other delicate purposes too – such as this one modified to become a soldering robot. Video after the break.

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Using Your Phone As A Microscope On The Electronics Workbench

February 5, 2021 by Jenny List 28 Comments

One aspect of working for Hackaday comes in our regular need to take good quality photographs for publication. I have a semi-decent camera that turns my inept pointing and shooting into passably good images, but sometimes the easiest and quickest way to capture something is to pull out my mobile phone.

It’s a risky step because phone camera modules and lenses are tiny compared to their higher quality cousins, and sometimes the picture that looks good on the phone screen can look awful in a web browser. You quickly learn never to zoom on a mobile phone camera because it’s inevitably a digital zoom that simply delivers grainy interpolated pictures.

That’s not to say that the zoom can’t be useful. Recently I had some unexpected inspiration when using a smartphone camera as a magnifier to read the writing on a chip. I don’t need an archival copy of the image… I just needed a quick magnifying tool. Have I been carrying a capable magnifier for soldering in my pocket or handbag for years without realising it? I decided to give it a try and it worked okay with a few caveats. While I have seen optics turn these cameras into pretty good microscopes, my setup added nothing more than a phone tripod, and will get you by in a pinch.

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Replacement LED Light Build Uses A Few Tricks

January 8, 2021 by Anool Mahidharia 24 Comments

Microscopes have become essential work bench tools for hackers, allowing them to work with tiny SMD parts for PCB assembly and inspection. Couple of years back, mad scientist [smellsofbikes] picked up a stereo microscope from eBay. But its odd-sized, 12 volt Edison-style screw base lamp, connected to a 17 volt AC supply, burned off after a while. He swapped the burnt lamp with the spare, which too blew up after some time. Dumb lamps. Maybe the original spec called for 24 volt lamps, which were unobtanium due to the odd Edison screw base, but those would throw out a pretty yellow-orange glow. Anyhow, for some time, he worked with a jury-rigged goose neck lamp, but frequently moving the microscope and the lamp was becoming a chore. When he got fed up enough about it, he decided to Build a Replacement LED Microscope Light.

Usually, such builds are plain vanilla and not much to write in about, but [smellsofbikes] has a few tricks worth taking note of. He found a couple of high power, SMD LEDs in his parts bin. They were just slightly wider than 1.6 mm across the terminals. So he took a piece of double sided, copper clad FR4, and edge mounted the LED against one side of the PCB piece, twisting it slightly so he could solder both terminals. This works as a great heat sink for the LED while still having a very narrow profile. This was important as the replacement LED board had to fit the cylinder in which the original lamp was fitted.

The LED is driven by a constant current buck regulator, powered by the original 17 volt transformer. A bridge rectifier and several filter capacitors result in a low ripple DC supply, for which he used the KiCad spice functionality to work out the values. The LM3414 driver he used is a bit off the beaten track. It can run LEDs up to 60 watts at 1 amps and does not require an external current sense resistor. This was overkill since he planned to run the LED at just 150 mA, which would result in a very robust, long lasting solution. He designed the driver PCB in KiCad, and milled it on his LPKF circuit board plotter. The nice thing with CNC milled PCBs is that you can add custom copper floods and extend footprint pads. This trick lets you solder either a 0805 or a 1206 part to the same footprint – depending on what you can dig up from your parts bin.

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This Expedient Microfiche Reader Illuminates Retro Datasheets

December 20, 2020 by Dan Maloney 22 Comments

You have to be of a certain vintage to remember doing research on microfilm and microfiche. Before the age of mass digitization of public records, periodicals, and other obscure bits of history, dead-tree records were optically condensed onto fine-grain film, either in roll form or as flat sheets, which were later enlarged and displayed on a specialized reader. This greatly reduced the storage space needed for documents, but it ended up being a technological dead-end once the computer age rolled around.

This was the problem [CuriousMarc] recently bumped into — a treasure trove of Hewlett-Packard component information on microfiche, but no reader for the diminutive datasheets. So naturally, he built his own microfiche reader. In a stroke of good luck, he had been gifted a low-cost digital microscope that seemed perfect for the job. The scope, with an HD camera and 5″ LCD screen, was geared more toward reflective than transmissive use, though, so [Marc] had trouble getting a decent picture of the microfiches, even with a white paper backing.

Version 2.0 used a cast-off backlight, harvested from a defunct DVD player screen, as a sort of light box for the stage of the microscope. It was just about the perfect size for the microfiches, and the microscope was able to blow up the tiny characters as well as any dedicated microfiche reader could, at a fraction of the price. Check out the video below for details on the build, as well as what [Marc] learned from the data sheets about his jackpot of HP parts.

With the wealth of data stored on microforms, we’re surprised that we haven’t seen any readers like this before. We have talked about microscopic wartime mail, though.

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