Since I did not expect to write a full post on this, good imagery documentation is not always available, so images of the microscopes original state and process made along the way is not always available. But I will try to explain all as good as I can, so others can maybe go and take the same road with this or other microscopes.

On the left in the image you see quite some black overhang and support on the ring around the mount. On the right you see that the Nikon mount is removed and that the black overhang and support is milled away until the constriction. This was needed so it could fit any other camera mount in the future. In this case the big holes are there to remove the mount assembly from the microscope. The smaller screw holes are there to connect any lens mount.

After milling away the “overhang” and reconnecting it back to the microscope we reattached the Nikon to Canon mount adapter. “Surprisingly” it was now posable to connect the Canon 5D MK III to the microscope. It was now time to take some “real images” and see its power projected on a digital full frame camera, Stunning micrographs popped up on the screen of my laptop one after another without any problems.

At that point my wish list was (almost) complete DIC optics √, working camera mounting √, good overal optics √, inverted √, well known microscope type and brand √, Good ergonomics √, locally available √, well tested √ and within budget √.

It had all I could wish for and extra, accept for a scanning stage. But as most microscope owners know getting a scanning stage that can be precisely controlled by a computer to take images at every step is hard to come by. If it exists or is available for your (type of) microscope its often very expensive and not within our budget.

But since it had “all” I wanted and I expected that the scanning stage was not an option by far in my budget or available second hand. I decided to buy it and mod & tweak it later on myself. Since I had the strong belive that this would work with this microscope and its standard stage.

Now a few months later I’m proudly presenting my first finished version of the microscope additions, mods and its digital photo scanning stage addition. Since there were some hardware and software iterations along the road in the past months, I will only show you the “final” working result and used parts for now. Below you will find some more information about final results and some information about why I need a digital photo scanning stage and how it works, together with some future plants for it.

WHAT IS A (DIGITAL PHOTO) SCANNING STAGE.

The goals I had with this new setup and its modifications is to get more functions, a better work flow, time reduction, higher resolution pictures and a smaller error mage in the images. To do this I needed to build a digital photo scanning stage.

A (digitally controlled photo) scanning stage is a microscope stage were its hardware can be controlled by software to get consistent precision movements in terms of a few microns or a time. By being able to control with such precision you can generate high resolution images. With each step made, images are taken using high power magnifications objectives to index (photograph) the specimen on the slide. This ensures the highest detail able to be captured, but because you are zoomed in so far its not posable to see the whole specimen. Therefore you need to “scan” the specimen in a comprehensive grid until you covered the whole specimen.

A simple example of a comprehensive grid imaging example, having 10 X axis rows and 10 Y axis column resulting in 100 images that need to be stitched together.

This is the most simple way not including any redundancy into the imaging of the specimen. For example if you would bump against foto number 43 and 76 you would have 2 big blurry parts with no “error correction” therefore I calculated 1/3 of overlap on each side so every part of the specimen will be photographed and seen on 3 diffrent images.

To do this you need to control its hardware with software the fancier you make and program the software, the more options and error correction you will have on controlling the hardware. In my case it only controls the step motors on the X and Y axis of the table and triggers the camera accordingly.

Depending on the magnification of the objective you are using you can choose a “calibrated” step size that fits the lens magnification. Calibrated means that we know how many steps the step motor has to take to get a fully new part of the specimen in frame. By dividing these step numbers into 3 on the X and also the Y axis you have a calibrated “error corrected” preset that can capture your specimens in a way that it has every part 3 times captured on the X axis and 3 times on the Y axis.

MORE INFO ABOUT THE HARDWARE PROCESS.

During the process of modding the microscope to give it a digital scanning stage, I came along some other “problems” that I wanted to fix.

First of all since its such a big and strong heavy duty microscope its hard to travel with it and some parts can easily be replaced such as the second “side camera port” for something that is 3D printed out of ABS. The “side camera port” is about 400–450 grams and is not used and because of the hole it always is more vulnerable for dust. So It was time to combine this with the micro controller box that along the way found its place in the side port. Not only saving weight (300 -350 grams) but also preventing dust of getting in and having in the same time a nice place to have the electronics to control the digital scanning stage.

Next to that the specimen stage plate and clip were old and worn so this could also use an upgrade so it would become a two in one stage plate with specimen clip together + it would also be able to rotate free.

Another problem was the worn out socket for the lamp in the “illumination post” every time the cord was in the socket it was wobbling everywhere and it was not properly hold by the socket any more. So also this needed a good fix.

But lets start with the digital scanning stage additions before I show you the other small modifications.

General note: all parts are custom designed by me in Autodesk fusion 360 and printed on my Ultimaker2+ 3D printer with black ABS Ultimaker filament. Most of the parts are printed at 0.1 layer hight with 25 to 100% infill with a 0.4mm nozzle using the Cura slicer.

Other parts that are used next to the 3D printed parts will be described in detail below.

(THE MAKING OF) THE DIGITAL SCANNING STAGE AND OTHER MODIFICATIONS TO THE MICROSCOPE:

Below you can find more information on the parts that are added to the microscope including the parts for the Digital photography scanning stage.

The Control board & enclosure:

Along the way I figured out that this would be the prefect spot to put al the electronics needed for the controls of the step motors and camera. Below you see the two 3d render previews the enclosure. The enclosure should hold the Makeblock Orion control board, 2 step motor drivers and a Me shutter units to control the step drivers and camera trough the software.