Looking for a User's Manual for American Optical Epistar scope.

Everything relating to microscopy hardware: Objectives, eyepieces, lamps and more.
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rnabholz
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Looking for a User's Manual for American Optical Epistar scope.

#1 Post by rnabholz » Sat Jul 13, 2019 11:08 pm

I am looking for a User's manual for this scope, An American Optical Epi scope. I believe it to be a model 1860 Epistar, but there is no badging on the scope identifying as such.

I checked the Xmission AO pages - did not see what I was looking for there. I would be pleased with a PDF copy and willing to pay a reasonable fee for it.

Not sure what I am going to do with this yet, so if any of you have any fun ideas for me, I would welcome those too.

Thanks for reading.

Rod
ao epi side.jpg
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KurtM
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Re: Looking for a User's Manual for American Optical Epistar scope.

#2 Post by KurtM » Sun Jul 14, 2019 1:14 am

I'll tell you what would be a fun thing to do with it: sell it to me. :P :lol:

Seriously, I just wrote our buddy Tom asking (more) questions about these stands (again), been wanting one for the past little while but have been consumed with rebuilding my antique house for the past 6 months, before it falls down around me, probably from the weight of too many microscopes. I'm not sure it'll do what I envision, but it seems like I'm forever stuffing Janjso lamps into the stage area to try and examine something that's opaque, and therefore impossible to illuminate with the more common transmitted light deal. That's what keeps my faithful old AO 120 in business in this age of DIC stands occupying my lab.

It's good to see you emerging from your cave once again, I've been wondering what you're up to.
Cheers,
Kurt Maurer
League City, Texas
email: ngc704(at)gmail(dot)com
https://www.flickr.com/photos/67904872@ ... 912223623/

PeteM
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Re: Looking for a User's Manual for American Optical Epistar scope.

#3 Post by PeteM » Sun Jul 14, 2019 2:31 am

Rod - don't know where you can find a manual, but the earlier industrial scopes (and I believe Xmission or someone has a manual for those) are essentially similar - certainly the same objectives.

Looks to me like you could retrofit a condenser and transmitted illumination to that stand, perhaps using standard 110 components. Might be interested to see things like diatoms with a bit of both transmitted and epi / darkfield illumination???

The industrial scopes also had provisions for polarizers if memory serves - are there slots or receptacles in you scope for that?

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Re: Looking for a User's Manual for American Optical Epistar scope.

#4 Post by zzffnn » Sun Jul 14, 2019 4:09 am

Welcome back, Rod! Your reappearance even lured Kurt out from his cave :mrgreen:

Over at photomacrography, people would usually remove that epi scope's specimen stage and put a small multidirectional goniometer stage to precisely position opaque subjects (typically insects). Here is an example:
https://www.photomacrography.net/forum/ ... php?t=8247

You don't have to have a entire epi scope to do that though. All you need is a few no cover objectives and sufficient working distance. For me, using tiny Maglite Solitaire LEDs, I prefer to have at least 3mm of WD. 6mm WD is of course much better, but it would cost quite a bit for objectives more powerful than 40x.

I have not found many interesting opaque subjects to view under 40x epi objective though (my most powerful epi obbjective is a 40x NA 0.55 LWD Olympus), except for some butterfly wings. At that power, your breathing and air turbulence may cause sample to move. I also don't have a dedicated epi scope, because my Nikon Optiphot can have its stage lowered to epi position and use removable objective turrets.

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Re: Looking for a User's Manual for American Optical Epistar scope.

#5 Post by rnabholz » Sun Jul 14, 2019 4:57 pm

KurtM wrote:I'll tell you what would be a fun thing to do with it: sell it to me. :P :lol:

Seriously, I just wrote our buddy Tom asking (more) questions about these stands (again), been wanting one for the past little while but have been consumed with rebuilding my antique house for the past 6 months, before it falls down around me, probably from the weight of too many microscopes. I'm not sure it'll do what I envision, but it seems like I'm forever stuffing Janjso lamps into the stage area to try and examine something that's opaque, and therefore impossible to illuminate with the more common transmitted light deal. That's what keeps my faithful old AO 120 in business in this age of DIC stands occupying my lab.

It's good to see you emerging from your cave once again, I've been wondering what you're up to.
Well, I'm not sure it will do what you want it to do, not sure what i want it to do, hence the questions.

So far I'm finding the short working distance a bit constricting. The 6.5x isn't too bad, but it gets very tight, very quickly with each click of the turret. Searching the area for thin, flat specimens to play around with.

Getting external light on a subject under tbe 40 or 60x objectives seems to be nearly impossible, at least using my ham-handed hillbilly techniques.

Still interesting to play with as a new challenge.

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Re: Looking for a User's Manual for American Optical Epistar scope.

#6 Post by rnabholz » Sun Jul 14, 2019 5:07 pm

PeteM wrote:Rod - don't know where you can find a manual, but the earlier industrial scopes (and I believe Xmission or someone has a manual for those) are essentially similar - certainly the same objectives.

Looks to me like you could retrofit a condenser and transmitted illumination to that stand, perhaps using standard 110 components. Might be interested to see things like diatoms with a bit of both transmitted and epi / darkfield illumination???

The industrial scopes also had provisions for polarizers if memory serves - are there slots or receptacles in you scope for that?
Thanks Pete

Yes, this stand came in a few different configurations, I think my version is the least capable, seems to be straight epi only.

That was part of my interest in a manual, to see just what it is capable of doing.

Thanks for your thoughts.

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Re: Looking for a User's Manual for American Optical Epistar scope.

#7 Post by rnabholz » Sun Jul 14, 2019 5:17 pm

zzffnn wrote:Welcome back, Rod! Your reappearance even lured Kurt out from his cave :mrgreen:

Over at photomacrography, people would usually remove that epi scope's specimen stage and put a small multidirectional goniometer stage to precisely position opaque subjects (typically insects). Here is an example:
https://www.photomacrography.net/forum/ ... php?t=8247

You don't have to have a entire epi scope to do that though. All you need is a few no cover objectives and sufficient working distance. For me, using tiny Maglite Solitaire LEDs, I prefer to have at least 3mm of WD. 6mm WD is of course much better, but it would cost quite a bit for objectives more powerful than 40x.

I have not found many interesting opaque subjects to view under 40x epi objective though (my most powerful epi obbjective is a 40x NA 0.55 LWD Olympus), except for some butterfly wings. At that power, your breathing and air turbulence may cause sample to move. I also don't have a dedicated epi scope, because my Nikon Optiphot can have its stage lowered to epi position and use removable objective turrets.
Thanks zz.

Holy cow, that is a heck of a rig! Not sure I am up for that, but I've said that before and eaten my words

For now I am mostly interested in learning how to use it, and finding interesting specimens to study.

The 40 and 60x do seem to be kind of extreme for what I have found to view under them so far, but maybe they will come in handy at some point.

Thanks for your input.

Hobbyst46
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Re: Looking for a User's Manual for American Optical Epistar scope.

#8 Post by Hobbyst46 » Sun Jul 14, 2019 5:44 pm

In principle, epi illumination would tempt me to do not only metalurgy and electronic chip survey, but also to fluorescence microscopy.
Although such purpose is not openly declared for the 1860 and 2560 Epistars, the brochure for the 2560, at least, includes a list of fluorescence accessories.
Here are the brochures
http://www.reichert.com/reference_manuals.cfm
(feeing stupid since Apochronaut will probably provide much better info...)

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Re: Looking for a User's Manual for American Optical Epistar scope.

#9 Post by zzffnn » Sun Jul 14, 2019 6:42 pm

Rod,

Sorry, I may not be clear. I meant you can remove the specimen stage from that epi scope, replace it with a goniometer and use the rig as a vertical rig. I cited Chris S' rig only to show how he uses goniometer as compact specimen stage.

I forgot about fluorescence. Pau from the other forum made a LED epi fluorescence rig:
https://www.photomacrography.net/forum/ ... uorescence

The most useful LED for fluorescence is a royal blue 455 nm LED.

viktor j nilsson
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Re: Looking for a User's Manual for American Optical Epistar scope.

#10 Post by viktor j nilsson » Sun Jul 14, 2019 6:58 pm

Charles Krebs constructed an even simpler setup using a UV flashlight, with really nicely results.

https://www.photomacrography.net/forum/ ... hp?t=33123

Hobbyst46
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Re: Looking for a User's Manual for American Optical Epistar scope.

#11 Post by Hobbyst46 » Sun Jul 14, 2019 6:58 pm

zzffnn wrote:The most useful LED for fluorescence is a royal blue 455 nm LED.
Specifically for green organisms (chlorophyll), 400-405nm and 425nm are equally efficient. These are the excitation peaks.
Last edited by Hobbyst46 on Tue Jul 16, 2019 1:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Looking for a User's Manual for American Optical Epistar scope.

#12 Post by rnabholz » Mon Jul 15, 2019 11:45 pm

Thanks for the ideas and links guys.

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Re: Looking for a User's Manual for American Optical Epistar scope.

#13 Post by jorymil » Fri Jan 05, 2024 11:27 pm

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 them here, but if you're in need of a copy, just e-mail him!

John

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