Metallurgical inverted microscope needs help

[GraemeP]

Hi
I have a Metallurgical Inverted Microscope Mec3 from Union (Tokyo). I acquired this a few years back but never really had time to play with it.
Now I have the time, and I have a manual sent to me by the manufacturers. It is in Japanese though, but that's not an issue right now.
Having had no luck at all trying to image anything put on the stage, I decided to strip it down and give it a clean and figure out how it worked.
To cut a long, long story short this scope has a broken beam splitter. It had previously been glued into place after what I suspect was a previous breakage.
It looks like it should be about 15mm square and sits in a little caddy which allows it to be rotated. If I can figure out the file attachment process, I'll post some pics.
Question is, where does one obtain optical spares such as these?
Thanks.

[GraemeP]

A picture of said item.

[BramHuntingNematodes]

You can buy components from edmunds or thorlabs or some such, but they tend to be priced at incredibly high rates compared to the junk I'm used to buying on the secondary market. As an indication of the type of customer they cater to, I bought a 15 dollar quarter wave film from edmunds and they later sent me unasked for via UPS a hard bound catalog several hundred pages long.

Surplus she'd has cheap stuff although their beam splitters are more frequently prisms.

You can also snuff around the auctions. The sometimes list loose articles for cheap.

[MicroBob]

Hi,
how about this one?
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001156 ... web201603_

Bob

[BramHuntingNematodes]

Neat. That's as cheap as it gets I think.

[GraemeP]

Indeed that is inexpensive.
The current (broken) splitter is 0.4mm thick. Does a greater thickness make much difference? And is it easy to cut?
Ta.

[Hobbyst46]

Hi,
how about this one?
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001156 ... web201603_

Bob

Maybe ridiculous, but I would verify before buying that that beam splitter is made of glass.

[Scarodactyl]

Unitron sold a lot of Union metallurgical microscope, maybe they still do. So if you're looking for parts that's a good search term.

[MichaelG.]

Hi,
how about this one?
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001156 ... web201603_

Bob

Maybe ridiculous, but I would verify before buying that that beam splitter is made of glass.

.


The specification is explicit ... so one would hope that it is.

MichaelG.

[MicroBob]

The current (broken) splitter is 0.4mm thick. Does a greater thickness make much difference? And is it easy to cut?

The bigger thickness will lead to a small offset of the light beam, but I don't think that this will be a problem. My experience with cutting special glasses was so-so. It sometimes doesn't break along the cut line as well as window pane glass or slides. The dimensions will probably not be critical though. So I would cut it a bit bigger and perhaps gnaw away protruding bits with a Dremel.

[GraemeP]

Thanks for the tips and the link. We'll see what happens in about a month's time when the AliExpress order arrives.