IOR MC9 research microscope
Posted: Mon Apr 06, 2020 8:59 pm
Well, it’s about time I got on with this writeup. I’ve had this scope for about a year and have fiddled a lot with it, and with similar scopes. It’s caused me quite a deal of frustration, especially with the photo-taking part. Anyway, let’s begin.
Warning 1: take all the following with a grain of salt. I’m an amateur lacking experience, and I may not have all the knowledge required to adequately convey all the information, or I may just have some things wrong.
Warning 2: many pictures.
Warning 3: I am not a native English speaker, so if anything sounds strange, well, that’s the breaks.
Some time ago, last spring, I was woken by a loud knocking on my front door. A gaunt, gray gentleman with a proletariat cap saluted crisply and took a heavy sack off of his shoulder. With a hard stare, he growled “Do you know for how long I’ve been carrying this? Here you go – merry labour day!” – and with a sharp *crack*, he was gone into thin air. On my doorstep was the IOR MC9.
As a short preamble, IOR stands for “Intreprinderea Optica Romana” – Romanian Optical Enterprise. It was Romania’s only optical devices factory, based in Bucharest, established in 1936 – and as such was responsible for producing everything from rifle telescopic sights, cameras, cinema projectors, microscopes, lenses, night vision devices. IOR is still state-owned to this day. The first IOR microscope was produced in 1951.
Detour to some background info: the IOR microscope families are basically as follows: MD (microscop didactic) – school scope, ML (Microscop Laborator) – I’ll let you guess what this one is, MM (microscop metalografic) – same as the one before it, MC (microscop cercetare) – research microscope. There are also others, like the NTI stereomicroscope or the Biorom, but these were basically the main families. The MC family, which concerns us, begins with the MC-1 in the 60s, then there is a gap in my knowledge, which goes straight to the MC5, MC6, MC7 and MC7a, and MC9. The MC9 is the IOR “flagship” scope.
An elusive beast of legend, I would be surprised if anyone knows about the MC9 – with the exception of some members of the Romanian academia or part of IOR. I had the scope for about a year and did not know its designation (MC9). It is not stamped or otherwise marked anywhere on the instrument, so I couldn’t write anything about it because I didn’t know what it really was.
So, to business. The MC9 is a research microscope capable of a multitude of viewing modes. It can do epi, trans and mixed illumination in UV, visible light or mixed light, brightfield or darkfield in just about any combination you can conceive, even unusual things (to me) like transmitted darkfield and epifluorescence simultaneously, or phase contrast brightfield and fluorescence brightfield simultaneously, etc. Due to my lack of experience, I have no knowledge if this is common to other research microscopes.
Okay, so starting with the generalities: it’s clearly a compound microscope. Not getting overly descriptive, it’s a heavy affair with well-placed controls, with a gray matte finish. Originally it comes with a binocular head that includes a zoom turret with 4 detents (1x, 1.25x, 1.6x and phase telescope). It is attached via a zeiss-like circular dovetail. The MC9 has two slots for illuminators in the back, one near the top and one on the bottom. The top one was used for the larger lamps, (HBO or CSI), while the one on the bottom was used for the 30w/6v lamp. Any lamp can be used either for epi, trans or mixed illumination.
The beam path is controlled by a right hand lever with 3 detents (top lamp, bottom lamp or mix), and by a knurled wheel on the left side (epi and trans). In the bottom part there is the standard field aperture control and a lever to flip the ground glass diffuser. There are two adjustment screws for centering the beam in the condenser. For epi-illumination, the condenser is integrated in the arm together with the field aperture, the centerable condenser aperture, two filter slots and a polarizer slot. The filters fit in aluminum casettes that slide into the slots. The beam exits via a hole to enter the fluorescence filter block. This block is mated to the arm by a dovetail and secured with a special screw. It looks like it is compatible with the epi-bright-and-darkfield block for the metalographical MC6, but it is not, not fully (more on this later, perhaps). The fluorescence block has three dichroics and one empty slot for visible light work. The respective dichroics have a 50/50 transmission / reflection ratio, and are made to function at 400, 510 and 580 nm respectively.
The coarse focus movement is spring-loaded to compensate for the stage weight; the fine focus knob is coaxial to the coarse focus and has a range of about 2 mm. It is interesting to note that the focus block is interchangeable with the ones on the MC6 and MC7, and the only serial number printed anywhere on this scope is on the left side of the focus block, which seems like it’s a bizarre choice. A friend had to service the focus block for his MC7 and I am attaching some pictures I made of the internals.
The MC9 came with a pretty comprehensive accessory kit. The original kit contains the scope itself with 5 achromatic objectives, a 6v/30w filament lamp, an HBO 200w mercury vapor lamp with a power unit for it, 4 condensers (UV 1.2 brightfield, UV 0.8 darkfield – an interesting mirrored parabolic device, and a visible light brightfield 1.4). There is also an optional CSI 250w lamp. The projection screen is not normally used for the MC9, but it is a perfect fit. Using my 30w equivalent LED illuminator, the image is barely visible and the camera ports on the left and right side, as far as I can see, do not respect the 160mm tube length – but perhaps my technique is deficient. So, the projection screen is pretty much useless, however impressive it may look. The quadruple condenser turretin some pictures was originally part of another package, either for the MC7 or the old MC1.
I don’t know what else to say about this thing, so ask away if you’re curious. Meanwhile I’ll leave you with some pictures.
I’m glad I managed to save this rare scope from the melter. Even If by today’s standards it is…well, substandard, perhaps, it is a piece of history I’m glad to have.
Warning 1: take all the following with a grain of salt. I’m an amateur lacking experience, and I may not have all the knowledge required to adequately convey all the information, or I may just have some things wrong.
Warning 2: many pictures.
Warning 3: I am not a native English speaker, so if anything sounds strange, well, that’s the breaks.
Some time ago, last spring, I was woken by a loud knocking on my front door. A gaunt, gray gentleman with a proletariat cap saluted crisply and took a heavy sack off of his shoulder. With a hard stare, he growled “Do you know for how long I’ve been carrying this? Here you go – merry labour day!” – and with a sharp *crack*, he was gone into thin air. On my doorstep was the IOR MC9.
As a short preamble, IOR stands for “Intreprinderea Optica Romana” – Romanian Optical Enterprise. It was Romania’s only optical devices factory, based in Bucharest, established in 1936 – and as such was responsible for producing everything from rifle telescopic sights, cameras, cinema projectors, microscopes, lenses, night vision devices. IOR is still state-owned to this day. The first IOR microscope was produced in 1951.
Detour to some background info: the IOR microscope families are basically as follows: MD (microscop didactic) – school scope, ML (Microscop Laborator) – I’ll let you guess what this one is, MM (microscop metalografic) – same as the one before it, MC (microscop cercetare) – research microscope. There are also others, like the NTI stereomicroscope or the Biorom, but these were basically the main families. The MC family, which concerns us, begins with the MC-1 in the 60s, then there is a gap in my knowledge, which goes straight to the MC5, MC6, MC7 and MC7a, and MC9. The MC9 is the IOR “flagship” scope.
An elusive beast of legend, I would be surprised if anyone knows about the MC9 – with the exception of some members of the Romanian academia or part of IOR. I had the scope for about a year and did not know its designation (MC9). It is not stamped or otherwise marked anywhere on the instrument, so I couldn’t write anything about it because I didn’t know what it really was.
So, to business. The MC9 is a research microscope capable of a multitude of viewing modes. It can do epi, trans and mixed illumination in UV, visible light or mixed light, brightfield or darkfield in just about any combination you can conceive, even unusual things (to me) like transmitted darkfield and epifluorescence simultaneously, or phase contrast brightfield and fluorescence brightfield simultaneously, etc. Due to my lack of experience, I have no knowledge if this is common to other research microscopes.
Okay, so starting with the generalities: it’s clearly a compound microscope. Not getting overly descriptive, it’s a heavy affair with well-placed controls, with a gray matte finish. Originally it comes with a binocular head that includes a zoom turret with 4 detents (1x, 1.25x, 1.6x and phase telescope). It is attached via a zeiss-like circular dovetail. The MC9 has two slots for illuminators in the back, one near the top and one on the bottom. The top one was used for the larger lamps, (HBO or CSI), while the one on the bottom was used for the 30w/6v lamp. Any lamp can be used either for epi, trans or mixed illumination.
The beam path is controlled by a right hand lever with 3 detents (top lamp, bottom lamp or mix), and by a knurled wheel on the left side (epi and trans). In the bottom part there is the standard field aperture control and a lever to flip the ground glass diffuser. There are two adjustment screws for centering the beam in the condenser. For epi-illumination, the condenser is integrated in the arm together with the field aperture, the centerable condenser aperture, two filter slots and a polarizer slot. The filters fit in aluminum casettes that slide into the slots. The beam exits via a hole to enter the fluorescence filter block. This block is mated to the arm by a dovetail and secured with a special screw. It looks like it is compatible with the epi-bright-and-darkfield block for the metalographical MC6, but it is not, not fully (more on this later, perhaps). The fluorescence block has three dichroics and one empty slot for visible light work. The respective dichroics have a 50/50 transmission / reflection ratio, and are made to function at 400, 510 and 580 nm respectively.
The coarse focus movement is spring-loaded to compensate for the stage weight; the fine focus knob is coaxial to the coarse focus and has a range of about 2 mm. It is interesting to note that the focus block is interchangeable with the ones on the MC6 and MC7, and the only serial number printed anywhere on this scope is on the left side of the focus block, which seems like it’s a bizarre choice. A friend had to service the focus block for his MC7 and I am attaching some pictures I made of the internals.
The MC9 came with a pretty comprehensive accessory kit. The original kit contains the scope itself with 5 achromatic objectives, a 6v/30w filament lamp, an HBO 200w mercury vapor lamp with a power unit for it, 4 condensers (UV 1.2 brightfield, UV 0.8 darkfield – an interesting mirrored parabolic device, and a visible light brightfield 1.4). There is also an optional CSI 250w lamp. The projection screen is not normally used for the MC9, but it is a perfect fit. Using my 30w equivalent LED illuminator, the image is barely visible and the camera ports on the left and right side, as far as I can see, do not respect the 160mm tube length – but perhaps my technique is deficient. So, the projection screen is pretty much useless, however impressive it may look. The quadruple condenser turretin some pictures was originally part of another package, either for the MC7 or the old MC1.
I don’t know what else to say about this thing, so ask away if you’re curious. Meanwhile I’ll leave you with some pictures.
I’m glad I managed to save this rare scope from the melter. Even If by today’s standards it is…well, substandard, perhaps, it is a piece of history I’m glad to have.