Help with Olympus BH2 DIC set up

[willc]

Hello all! I am new to the forum and recently took a leap of faith on an ebay scope with DIC capabilities. I knew the price was too good to be true for DIC to be working out of the box and sure enough I still have some shopping to do. If anyone could help me with this by answering questions or pointing me to any good resources I would hugely appreciate it.

What I have:
An Olympus BH2 BHT
- Everything seems in working order but some of the optics in the trinocular head could use probably use a cleaning.
The BH2-UMA illuminator.
- This includes an unmarked filter of some sort in the polarizer slot, and a UTP530 slider that has ND12, lambda, and empty filters.
- I don't have a lamp on the illuminator but after improvising with a flashlight it seems to be working and I confirmed the A.S. aperture, F.S. aperture, and centering mechanism seem to be functional.
- I have an empty filter holder in the analyzer slot.
An LH50A Lamp housing for the illuminator (sans lamp and power supply...)
- I can find LH50A on ebay with the 12v 50w halogen lamp I'm missing for not too much $ but it doesn't come with a power supply. Does anyone know a compatible power supply?
A full set of Neo SPlan objectives with Nomarski prisms
- All seem in pretty good shape and have a clear image in brightfield
- The prisms seem to work and will engage/disengage properly
A 1.25 brightfield condenser
- Seems to be in good condition and allows me to use this as a brightfield scope as I hunt for the missing pieces to the DIC system.

I am pretty sure I'm missing the proper polarizer (if what I have in my polarizer slot is actually a polarizer and not just some blue filter, it doesn't have any mechanism to rotate it). It looks like I can find one of these on ebay along with the analyzer for ~$400.
I am definitely missing an illumination source for the UMA... Could I use the mercury burner lamp house? Those seem to be readily available on ebay with power supply. Or should I keep hunting for the parts I need to get the 50w halogen lamp set up? Or come up with some DIY illumination (I remember seeing an article about fitting a fiber optic system that looked interesting..)?

Thanks in advance for any input! Hopefully I will be sharing some photos of this thing in action soon

[Scarodactyl]

Could I use the mercury burner lamp house?

Not unless you want to go blind. Those are for fluorescence work, not general illumination.

You can hook up a fiber optic light guide to the end of the illuminator and it will generally work. Maybe not as ideally as the correct illuminator but not badly. The original 100w lamphouse for the bh2-uma is quite good.
For epi DIC you'd ideally need the rotating polarizer.
Just in general tou understand this is an epi DIC system, right? Not transmitted dic. So this scope is phenomenal for looking at flat reflective subjects without a coverslip, not so much for biological work.

[willc]

Thanks for the reply!

Not unless you want to go blind.

Yep, that would be my concern. I found some listings on ebay that included the mercury burner power supply but said it had a halogen lamp, so I was thinking there might be a bulb-swap or configuration option that would work.

I found a halogen lamp that I think ought to work and what looks to be the proper polarizer/analyzer set.

I'm aware this is a reflected light DIC system but I (probably naively) assumed the objectives/prisms/analyzer on this scope would be compatible if in the future I wanted to attach the BH2-NC Nomarski condenser for transmitted light.

Anyway, the parts are on order so hopefully I will be able to get this up and running when they arrive...

[Scarodactyl]

The epi DIC setup and objectives are unfortunately completely disjunct from the transmitted DIC equipment. You might be able to improvise something but it wouls take a fair amount of experimentation.

[woyjwjl]

Pictures can explain everything

Original shooting system 1

image_editor_1646532016895.jpg (127.34 KiB) Viewed 2197 times

Original shooting system 2

image_editor_1646531413106.jpg (150.58 KiB) Viewed 2197 times

Original shooting system 3

image_editor_1646531405388.jpg (110.73 KiB) Viewed 2197 times

Original shooting system 4

image_editor_1646531358358.jpg (113.5 KiB) Viewed 2197 times

My DIY LED light source

My DIY LED light source

IMG_20220311_192332.jpg (81.88 KiB) Viewed 2197 times

[deBult]

THE source on manuals and maintenance guides for Olympus BH and BH2 ERA: Alan Wood

http://www.alanwood.net/