MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

72mm as it turns out.... Sorry buddy; no expensive filters for you! IR and UV bandpass filters are _not_ cheap. 5x the cost of a lens in some cases.

A right angle spanner/wrench/snap ring plier gives more control. The 100 series nosepiece fits and works in a 10/20. Solves the 5 place rarity issue. Exactly what I used. My snap-ring pliers have interchangeable heads; the right-angled ones were exactly what I needed. I'm doing the 110/120 heads fo...

Thank you for the advice. Agreed: using force is not ideal. It's completely unnecessary for the series 110/120 turrets as well; only for the series 10 scopes is it needed. I was able to swap the turret on my Epistar in about 10 minutes--I now have a 5-position turret there! My 10s will probably rema...

Picked up a set of inexpensive snap-ring pliers: https://www.lowes.com/pd/IRWIN-VISE-GRIP-Convertible-6-in-Snap-Ring-Pliers/1003142302 They work a treat on the AO 10 nosepiece screw. The turret ring itself seems to be a very tight press fit with the rest of the nosepiece assembly; going to experimen...

Yep - read through it a while ago. Was hoping for more of a reference manual. I can contribute a little bit of knowledge of my own now. The nosepiece dovetail has four screws in it. Removing the dovetail allows for access to the prism holder. Again, if you remove four screws, you can access the pris...

An m28 to RMS adapter is on my wish list! And yeah... you end up making about 70% return on an eBay sale, plus taxes on that income. I'm seeing stuff now on Etsy that never would have been there a few years ago.

Anyone have a manual or small instruction booklet for the American Optical reflected DIC attachment? I came into one a few days ago, and while it's mostly self explanatory, it'd be nice to see the various parts enumerated and see what each of the three turret/,analyzer stops is for (1 polarizer, 1 o...

That's a really elegant piece of engineering. If you don't mind my asking, do you have an EE background?

Ugh. New 28-200 lens uses 62mm, so revising upward.
Now I have lenses that take 37 mm (lumix point & shoot), 46 mm, 52 mm, 58 mm, and 62 mm filters.

I can do blue excitation light. But i would like to see the red autoflorescence of vegetal stuff. I use a RGB LED torch that works wonderfully but i have two diferent position for the cube filter and i think that none of them allows for that. Should i try to change the filters in the cube? I think ...

It seems like the price of entry for phase contrast these days is about $150, with a full set of objectives, annuli, and phase telescope coming in at $250 or so. Does this seem right? Any better deals to be had?

In Windows 11, the system logs are called Event Viewer. Should just be able to search on "Event Viewer" on your toolbar.

FWIW, blekenbleu: I've been reading your website a bunch lately, as I'm pretty interested in reflected light stuff, and I have an Epistar as well. It's been super-informative, so thank you!

Remember that you can't actually get yellow light by mixing red and green, nor purple by mixing red and blue. The resulting light appears yellow or purple to our eyes, but the actual wavelengths of the incident light do not change. Colors mix; light does not. You can verify this for yourself with an...

What computer operating system are you running? That makes a difference when recognizing hardware devices. I'm primarily a Linux guy, but regardless of OS, there's always a system log you can check for device status. Best to open the log, plug in the device, then refresh. If nothing shows up in the ...

I ended up with https://www.ebay.com/itm/395034374121 , which probably isn't as nice as yours. The "USA stock" took me in; shipping is still about 10 days out. I'll keep your tips in mind (sorry for the pun) if I end up needing v2 of this.

Thanks, folks. For $10, an adjustable wrench like that seems like a good thing to have. There's always the odd filter, eyepiece or reticle that's cross-threaded where a little torque is needed as well. I may need some snap-ring pliers at some point as well: I have a couple of things (folding bicycle...

Anyone know what sort of wrench is needed to disassemble the AO 10/20/110/120 nosepiece turrets? I'm familiar with larger pin spanners from other applications, but these are relatively small, and seem like they might not deliver enough torque. Probably will just say "meh, good enough" here, but have...

"My compliments to the chef, Quark! These tube grubs are chilled to perfection!"

Looking at some recent papers online, it sounds like there's a very clear transport process inside cells, and that the inside of a cell is nowhere close to being homogeneous, which is a fairly key assumption of Brownian motion. Actin filaments, microtubules, etc. - there's a whole microstructure to ...

What about the movement of the organelles inside the yeast cells? Is that brownian movement as well or rather a result of cellular function and metabolism? Or both? That might actually be measurable if you can resolve the organelles finely enough: if there's a mean displacement proportional to the ...

I'll answer my own question here. I'm pretty well decided on 58 mm camera filters: 58 is what the Canon kit lenses and some primes use, and the 58 mm UV/IR and IR-pass filters are still under $70. So... no 200mm f/2.8 lenses here. Polarizers are still relatively inexpensive as well. I could see usin...

Agreed. It's a pretty niche thing: I certainly would not have sought out an 11 on my own, but having the pieces allows me to put a 60 microglide stage or a 50 phase contrast stage on an otherwise stock 10. As you say, 10s are cheap; you wouldn't try to upgrade an 11, but you would strip it down to p...

I picked up what I thought was an American Optical Series 10 microscope for parts a few weeks ago. When I got it, it turned out to be slightly different: a Series 11M with a fixed-height stage: very similar to the various student models. As far as I can tell, _exactly_ the same stage. The difference...

Apologies for resurrecting an old thread here, but it's germane. I e-mailed Steve Neeley directly, and he gave me copies of both the 1860 user's manual and 1860 parts manual. Super-fast response from him; really nice guy. I'll leave it to him to upload the manuals to his site, rather than linking to...

Not strictly a microscopy question, but could anyone suggest a good "common" camera filter diameter to standardize on? My little Lumix cameras take 37 mm, my old Canon A-1 used 52mm, and I'm sure there's other common lens diameters out there. Getting ready to do some infrared and UV photography; wou...

But did you have fun trying it out? There's almost always going to be someone who's done something before you, but the knowledge you gain for yourself is still worth it. I think all of us here love the giddy feeling of discovery. Not sure what your math/science background is, but you might want to c...

I apologize for the somewhat dire tone of my OP. In terms of learning about microscope optics and lighting circuitry, this sounds like a really fun and worthwhile project. Even if you don't get exactly what you want, it sounds like a really worthwhile experience. Science is a lot of times about the ...

I believe there's a flaw in your reasoning here. Combining light from two or three differently colored LEDs does _not_ generate light of any color. You can get light that appears to your eyes as any color you like, but the actual physical characteristics of that light are limited to the 20 nm or so ...

Thanks for the quick response, apochronaut! Sounds like a standard trinocular tube will be a little easier to come by, though this one sounds like a possible machining project for me down the road. The 1040 heads are pretty rare from what I can tell, so I'll definitely hang onto it. I'll also start ...