Hi,
Rather than start this blog by writing about grand plans or why I’m doing it, I thought I’d just start with something I’ve been working on this past week.
The two pictures are of Opt-E’s W1 microscope with a nPoint piezo focusing stage. Basically, it’s my interference microscope, the W1-IM. I still have a lot of software development to do and to help with that, I need a little stand for the microscope. So what I’ve done the past week is design the 5 white parts to be 3-D printed. The rest of the parts to make the stand are from various catalogs. The stand has three fine adjusting screws and PTFE balls to sit directly on an optic. In this configuration vibration isolation is not needed since the part and the microscope are in contact.
There are a bunch of variations of how something like this can be used. My initial goal for use of this focusing stage is so I can do more programming at home with the instrument. I’ll put the stand together after I get all the parts in so I’ll update you in a week or so.
Bill
