I wanted a quality name brand microscope that I could find parts for and was upgradeable so I can add features in the future. I settled on a used Nikon Microphot-FX from eBay. It still wasn't cheap and it lacked the power supply, cables, objectives, and other minor things. But it did have a nice phase contrast condenser with darkfield. I purchased several used objectives off of eBay, one group was being sold as broken , not working, and for parts. I was able to get all but two working. I have hopes that I can repair the remaining two. I I purchased a small polarizing filter to go in the filter holder between the objectives and the viewing assembly and used a camera polarizing filter over the light source to give me good quality polarized viewing capabilities. I really like looking at crystals and thin sections of rocks under polarized light. I was able to source two power supplies for the microscope and I purchased a bunch of old microscope cables and fortunately that bunch had the necessary 25 pin cable I needed to go from the power supply to the microscope. I personally think Nikon did a bit of over engineering on this thing, but I can't find any plastic on it other than knobs and the horizontal stage rack gear. The microscope is alive.
The coarse and medium focus are a bit stiff as well as a knob that positions target overlays in the viewfinder. I hired a Nikon authorized microscope service shop to come out and give the scope a tune up. That made a big difference....But. The technician hadn't seen a monster scope like this before and wasn't familiar with how to work on it. Before he came out I warned him that this wasn't a typical microscope and he might want to allocate extra time to look at it. He didn't and wasn't able to get the service manuals from Nikon. He did the best he could and only charged me a fraction of what was quoted. But I am going to need to do some work on the scope on my own. Just when I thought I could get lazy in my old age
I also wanted to illuminate some larger samples from the side so I again hit eBay for a fiber optic light source. The prices were ouch.. I was able to find a broken one that had been abused, was all marked up, had a crack in the case, and wouldn't power on for about 10% of what working models were going for used. I grabbed it. When I received it it rattled on the inside and was completely dead, just like advertised. Nothing that a multimeter, a new lamp, screwdrivers, glue, and solvent can't fix. I will say that Zeiss has a way of puzzling their light sources together that makes them unintuitive getting into them. The fuses were good. There was a small broken piece of plastic and some glass shards inside the machine. The fan mount was broken. After fixing the mechanical problems and replacing the lamp I tried turning it on. Nope. Further troubleshooting. I ended up discovering that it had a bad power cord. The cord got 110vac at the plug but by the time it got into the unit it had dropped to 12vac without any current. Replaced the cord and the unit came to life. I reassembled the unit and took care of some cosmetic issues and now I have a very nicely working fiber light source.
In the future I hope to add DIC, fluorescence, etc. to this scope but for now my wallet needs to recover.
I hope to have lots of fun in the future.
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