Zeiss Standard Junior - "Bundeswehr" - Bob's big travel microscope

[MicroBob]

Hi together,
I have been taking microscopes on holiday trips since a lot of years. I have several small microscopes, each with it's own strengths and limitations. For this years holiday a bit more space was available in the luggage and I decided to take a more comfortable model with me. For this purpose I bought a Zeiss Standard Junior, later version with roller bearing guided stage, that had been added a built in illuminator. This is a special retrofit of a 1960s microscope with a halogen light that was added in 1988. It lives in an olive green box with sheet metal corners and there were visible signs that document the retrofit. I added proper holder, felt covered metal strips, that secure the microscope, and a 3D-printed drawer for accessories. The microscope was bought cheaply as it was defect, fortunately only from hardened grease. After a 95% dismantling, cleaning and regreasing it works nicely. It probably has never been used it it's 50-60 years! The workmanship is absolute top level, no signs of "Junior" quality here! I changed the feeble 10W illuminator to a 3W LED with 5V USB input, that can be powered by a power bank or a power tool battery with adapter.
I used it quite a bit and am very happy with it. What I missed was a stronger objective than the basic 40:1 achromat.

Bob

[Timemaster1212]

Beautiful setup, I would love to hear where you take this stand!

[Charles]

Bob,
That is really nice.

[75RR]

I still have very fond memories of my Zeiss Standard Junior, and not just because it was my first microscope, the build quality is simply amazing. They don't build them like they used to any more.

Looks like you have both main and battery illumination options - very practical.

When you say that you want more than a 40x objective ... what are you looking at?

[MicroBob]

Hi together,
for the holiday trip I packed stuff to make botanic hand sections (not used ), placton net and -sieves (used a bit) and stuff to do diatom collecting and cleaning by incineration (used a lot). I didn't plan to take photos but soon forgot this intention.
I brought the original objectives 2,5 Plan, 10 and 40:1 achromats an a 16:1 Plan. For fun with plancton the objective set would have been ideal but for diatom slides not so much. I decided against taking oil immersion objectives and also didn't take my beloved Zeiss Jena 40:1 0,95 dry apo as I just don't want to risk that it gets damaged or stolen on the trip.
There is quite a bit of unused space in the box so I might install additional drawers and equipment holders. In the tiny holday hut I used most of the living room table to set up my microscopy stuff. Here a well adjusted system would be better that holds everything needed and is quick to pack together again.

The power supply system was very convenient: USB 5V is not much more than an LED takes and it is easy to set up different power sources. Especially in mobile use a battery power supply is great as there is no cable dangling where someone could step on or tumble over. The Bosch power tool battery has 3 cells of about 4V each and 4Ah, so 40-50Wh. The original Bosch USB adapter is cheap and works well, but there has to be a minimum current of about 0,1A or it shuts of. For brightfield this is already too much and I took an ND filter with me.
There power tool battery USB adapters are a fairly dependable kind of power bank, but only recommendable when you actually have the power tools for it.

Apart from the diatom samples I also collected some flower buds for paraffin embedding.

Bob

[hans]

The original Bosch USB adapter is cheap and works well, but there has to be a minimum current of about 0,1A or it shuts of.

Could try adding a 1.5k pull-up resistor on either the D+ or D- signal which is how a host normally determines presence and speed of an attached device. No idea if something like your Bosch power adapter would even be monitoring those signals, though. (Officially the pull-up should be 1.5k to 3.3V but I think pulling directly to 5V VBUS would be fine for something like this.)

[MicroBob]

Hi Hans,
thank you for that hint! The adapter is intended for use with a heat jacket and I don't know whether it includes the computer typ of checks, but I will try it. The use of the ND filter is no problem, but when I changed from low power brightfield to higher power Ccircular obliqu lighting, I always had to juggle the filter in and back again. So an electronic version would be much more comfortable.

Bob

[Rossf]

Have a nice holiday! I’ve taken little mirror scopes camping even-I’ve got a drill power pack that can attach a USB charger and was thinking of doing something similar to my shamefully not used PZO scope-what type of LED did you use? I thought about using one brightness setting and use ND filters to keep things simple.
Ross