#12
Post
by Tom Jones » Wed Apr 06, 2022 4:35 pm
No offense, but I think you need to go back and reassess what you want to do, and why. You say you want to seen protein and collagen, but some pretty simple things like phase contrast and polarization are a bit over your head.
To be brutally honest, until you can be a lot more specific about your quest, this whole enterprise is way over your head.
You have a HUGE amount of learning to do before you you should even think about acquiring any microscope to look for protein and collagen. You haven't even mentioned what kinds you want to visualize, where they are, or why. It doesn't sound like you know. You need more background education than any forum or group of forums can ever provide.
And as for scanning or transmission electron microscopes, I really doubt you have the time, money, and patience to to get one set up and running. The maintenance contract alone would break most of us. I've done clinical microscopy for 40 years and would love to have and electron microscope to play with. I did TEM microscopy when I was in college, and was actually playing with an SEM a couple of months ago at the university I attended. I'll tell you straight up front, it's way too expensive, and way too complex for most amateurs. In fact, most research facilities have dedicated TEM/SEM microscopists and core labs to do the microscopy, because it's too expensive and too tedious generally for the researchers and grad students to learn to do well enough to get what they need. It's not a good use of their time and money, so they share the costs with other researchers and concentrate the necessary talents in dedicated microscopists. I've met one guy who has an SEM in his basement, but he was trained as an electrical engineer so he can maintain his old scope by himself, and build replacement parts as necessary. He uses it for photography and some contract research.
Why do I think what you really want is to look at are protein and collagen dietary supplements?