MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

Out of curiosity, how do you think it would compare to their MZ6?

I'm glad you're enjoying this one. I have heard bad things about the reliability of Leica stereos (I'm sure everyone has), but at the same time I see a lot of them in use when I visit my alma mater (and take some time to peek into the labs to see what they're using). It's certainly a very nice-looki...

I have seen a few of these for sale before but never had one on hand. They look very nice and hefty. Were they meant for wafer inspection?

I recently came across this baby at a surplus sale--I'm only vaguely familiar with hardness testers or how to use them, but I love how solidly built it is. Does anyone know where I can find a bit more information on it? I doubt I'll have much of a use for it but it was too cool to just leave there. ...

It is hard to tell by eyeballing, but it seems possible. Thanks for the link.

Regrettably there is no mirror.

SOLD I've been thinking about this scope, but it just isn't getting enough attention from me so I'm planning to pass it on. I'm putting it on eBay for 125 obo, but here I'd take a much lower offer since I know it'll go to someone who will treat it right. This is a neat classic 15 series AO/Spencer s...

Just be careful with oil of wintergreen. Great smell but too much skin exposure or ingestion can be dangerous.

Yup, most of them are. They're going on eBay soon though. I'll send you a PM.

I would think that any environment that will put condensation on a plastic dust cover is already unsuitable for storing a microscope.

My guess is misalignment of the head if you haven't checked that already. I've had that happen while swapping heads between my dad's smz-10 and my scienscope smz clone, and it can be surprisingly convincing from the outside until you get it seated correctly.

Failing that, there is always RAF.

You can always use an hdmi to VGA adapter if you're dead set on using that irresistible 5 dollar garage sale LCD.

I have found that I use fiber optic illumination more than anything else, even when using a specialized gem microscope with nice darkfield illumination. 150w fiber optic illuminators aren't very expensive, though tracking one down with a forked poseable gooseneck can be a bit more of a pain. Totally...

Wow, that should open all sorts of awesome possibilities!

Yup, that's the relatively rare 0.8x I believe. (I say relatively rare because I think I've never seen one on a complete microzoom listed for sale, and they don't come up on eBay as much as the standard set, but they are still relatively available and not insanely expensive. The only one I've never ...

I imagine these were designed with heavier use in mind than what we are likely to give them (though of course it's best not to rely on that). On the upside, it's not too hard to replace the rack/holder entirely if need be--I did it on an older gem microscope with a stereo star head that just wouldn'...

They aren't listed in the manual, but they might work? Kind of sounds like what Leica puts on their forensic comparison scopes. Oddly they didn't mark the industrial objectives with the infinity symbol or a finite length so it is hard to be sure.

The 570 is an excellent microscope head. The stereo star line are classics on par with (and reputed by many to be at least a bit better than) the classic Bausch and Lomb stereozooms. They have that nice oldschool engineering and build quality, and are made to last. You probably won't have to do any ...

[Sold]Bausch and Lomb Microzoom II trinocular microscope, all set up and ready to go. Includes 5 objectives: 2.25x, 3x, 8x, 25x and 50x B&L "industrial" objectives (extra long working distance), halogen coaxial illumination, trinocular port set up for canon camera, excellent hefty base with coarse a...

This might be too much to ask, but do you know who makes the Scienscope E-series microscopes, like this one? https://www.scienscope.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/CMO-PK2E.png They are a somewhat impressive take on the Nikon SMZ scopes, which is compatible with at least the SMZ10 (though the head no...

(Not to be pushy, but I have a working AO one ten with a teaching head in the for sale section now that I am really ready to part with, so if you want to dip your toes in I'd cut you a real good deal on it so you can save the rest of the budget for accessories).

Numerical Apertures are listed in the brochure that I linked ... MichaelG. Thanks, that is convenient. This is a normal planapo 1x, not an hr objective, so it's only 0.1. Probably beats out my stereozoom 7 anyway. Does you zoom work smooth? There might be a reason for the cog leaving it's place. It...

Unfortunately the NA of the objective isn't too likely to turn heads. The 1.6x planapo option only has an NA of 0.21, so the 1x is significantly lower than that. Still, it does take some optical wizardry to get an objective to behave well across that whole zoom range. But it should have good color c...

Thanks everyone! That was it, there was a close-fitting cap on thr knob that pulled off to reveal two setscrews. Loosening them allowed the knobs to slip offm the whole thing still wouldnt come all the way apart, but (and this is an early Christmas miracle) the problem was obvious: the gear on the z...

I recently picked up an SMZ1500 zoom body on eBay for a pretty low price. It came with a planapo 1x objective so I already got my money's worth, but I was hoping I might be able to fix the zoom body as well and make it an insane deal. Nikon's smz1500 has a whopping 15:1 zoom ratio which I have high ...

Yeah, i can't recommend it, only say what I did. It didn't cause any problems but it was used very sparingly.

B&l eyepieces can be disassembled by unscrewing, though on some you need a long flat implement to get the top off (it has two notches on either side of the ocular with empty space between). My go-to solution is a wood chisel ground to the right length. Otherwise just make very sure you keep the orie...

Radazz wrote:One of mine was coated in dried urine.
But it’s satisfying to bring them back.

I got one that I thinkhas some inside. Rank smell when the light starts warming up. Got any good tips? It's a nice nikon brightfield-darkfield stereo base so I really want to save it.

Note that you can also buy a premade version of this on eBay from seller mmalkin15, which is where I got the idea from: https://www.ebay.com/itm/M420-Wild-Leica-Adapter-for-M420-Makroskop-APS-C-Digital-Photography-ON-SALE/322811185124 This is a mini-project I recently completed and I figured I shoul...