Camera Update

After several months of patient waiting i now have a set of microscope objectives (4x, 10x, 40x and 100x oil) and an m42 to rms ring (i wanted it for a mounting platform rather than for my current camera)

 

So far i have significantly higher magnification than was ever possible with my Helios 44-2

Taken with 4x lens

Taken with 10x lens

I am having trouble with the 40x and 100x objectives though, i am quite sure that the focusing strength of the lenses are high enough that i need to position the sensor even further back. I made this assumption when i looked at the camera configurations for trinocular microscopes. So far im getting some awesome results, going even further i purchased a slide micrometer to determine the scale.

Helios 44-2

4x Objective

10x Objective

 With a bit of rough calculations it works out to 3.5 px \ 0.01mm for the Helios, 10.7 px \ 0.01mm for the 4x and 26.5 px \ 0.01mm for the 10x objective... i really want to get the 40x and 100x objectives working now.

Huge Eprom Eraser

Over the past year i joined a small hackerspace that was just getting on its feet, one of the major initiatives we have going on is recycling... or what recycling really should be. In that time i have collected over a hundred eproms and i really should do something with them. I already have a chip programmer but lack the necessary eraser needed to prepare the chips for programming.

Naturally i went online to see what was out there... for 5 to 20 dollars i could get an eraser with a capacity of 2 or 3 chips. That won't do the trick if i want to batch test a few hundred of these things. The solution came when i found an old florescent blacklight in the corner, it drives f15t8 bulbs and i can easily get g15t8 bulbs which emit light in the crucial UVC spectrum.

The only real issue is the fact the UVC spectrum is very dangerous, enough to cause burns to the skin and your retina! I chose to use a cheap metal toolbox as an enclosure and sealed every seam to prevent light from escaping.

The rest was just dismantling the old light for the parts i needed and bolt them to the inside of the toolbox.

I used an old spring wound timer to control the time of exposure and added a safety switch to cut power if the door was open.

 Also i added a tiny plastic window so i could see if the bulb was working, UVC light won't pass though, pretty much the only thing it will pass though is quartz. Everything works fine so far, it takes about 7 minutes to erase a 27c512 eprom. I will run more detailed tests when i have the free time.

CD Rom XY Bed

 For my next project i am going to build an actual microscope from scratch, including all of the optics (i have a set of rms thread 4, 10, 40 and 100 times microscope objective on the way)

my plan is to have the entire thing mechanized along the x,y and z axis so that i can do precise focus stacked images and stitch them together for one obscenely large closeup of whatever i can get my hands on, for a cheap x,y bed i bolted together a matched set of CD Rom assemblies and epoxied the bolts for extra support

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next on my schedule is to finish my last project, mostly code plus a cross slide that needs finishing

8 inch Silicon Wafer

I just received a few defective cut dies and a complete 8 inch silicon wafer from electronic goldmine for extra test subjects, also they look fucking awesome just on their own

just a few quick pictures, i plan on taking better pictures for my next project

immediately i noticed bare silicon takes better pictures, i want considerably better magnification now... and a mechanical bed to scroll across with

just some pictures of the small dies, pretty nice... i wonder what they are

even more pictures yet

the head of a very old hard drive, i really though there would be more to one

just a bit of printed cable from the same hard drive

More Pictures

Found a few things i wanted to take a look at with the camera, should have my cross slide built soon so i can focus more precisely

A closeup of a test print from our (mostly) operational cupcake cnc

An lcd, crts are almost impossible to properly capture

Parts of scanner image sensors, the ccd is a compilation of many thin segments joined together

just some smd caps and resistors, for an idea of scale the are about 2mm long

Webcam Details

Matching a web camera with a standard camera lens turned out to be an interesting task, there were several different methods i have seen but it wouldn't be very fun if i didn't do my own

I started out with a cheap pvc conduit box and built a mounting system that could be adjusted in all directions, i drilled out holes and epoxied  bolts down so that i could thread bolts in each corner. then thread locked bolts on each end and epoxied rare earth magnets. The idea was to hold a sheet of steel or plastic while allowing freedom to center the sensor. Regular epoxy did not hold very well to either the bolts or the pvc so i used jb weld. It worked out quite well since i need a fair bit of control over the amount of magnification. To prevent light reflecting on the inside i spray painted the entire thing flat black

I decided to go with a standard m42 lens, they use a standard threaded mount and it is easy to pick up a suitable lens for a decent price. I picked up a cheap adapter that allows a m42 lens to be used with a different camera mount, filed down the bayonet tips on the back and used it for a flange to mount the lens . I made the mistake of not having enough distance between the lens and had to use extension tubes to increase the distance.

For the lens i picked up a Helios 44-2 for 30 dollars including shipping, with a focal distance of 58mm and a manual aperture of f16 down to f2.8.

I went with a logitech c600 webcam, it was the best fixed focus one i could get. At 1600*1200 video resolution at ~15 frames per second im not complaining. After gutting the camera and removing the lens i simply mounted it on a square of thick plastic with some hot glue, it is held on by rare earth magnets on either side. For my first test subjects i used my large collection of eproms, my first tests allowed me to see the NEC logo and manufacturer's code on an old 8051 micro controller. Quartz windows do unfortunately give a bit of distortion, also the depth of field is very narrow. I'm building a cross slide to properly hold and focus with this thing. So far i have been focusing manually by sliding it back and forth until the target comes into focus and gently nudge the camera the rest of the way.

Modified Webcam

I just finished my webcam i am using for a telecine project

Im not entirely sure what the magnification im getting with it but it takes some very excellent pictures: