1/2″x18″ Galvanized Threaded Pipe – look for this in the plumbing section.

I found a 12″x24″ piece in the off-cuts section of my store for $1 which worked perfectly I didn’t have to cut it down at all, AND IT WAS $1! Score.

Particle board, preferably with a white laminate surface and large enough to provide a stable base for the stand.

Here’s a breakdown of what I used and how I put it all together for less than $30. So, this afternoon I went to my local big box home improvement store and wandered around until I managed to design and piece together what I think will solve a lot of the issues I was having. Hand holding it isn’t an option either, as even the slightest movement at such high magnifications turns your demonstration into a bad example of the Harlem Shake.ĭespite the problems I ran in to, I really wanted to use the camera in a couple of outreach events I’ll be participating in later this month, but I couldn’t afford to invest much in a solution.

I’ve used it in a few lectures & labs to show specimens, structures and techniques, but honestly haven’t had much success, largely because the stand it came with is pretty well useless.

This little device cost ~$100, and provides magnification up to 200x life size! (Note: there are similar products available around the web for cheaper, but I can’t say how well they may or may not work.)

Lately I’ve been playing around with a 2 megapixel USB Microscope from EmCal Scientific Inc that I picked up at the 2011 Entomological Society of America meeting in Reno, Nevada. With aperture diaphragm.Insects make great teaching tools for a wide variety of lessons in evolution & biology, but their small size can limit what you can do if you don’t have a microscope set up. X-LED8 with white 8 W LED (6,300K) with brightness control. Removable to extend the working distance up to 150 mm. With 4x/10x, 20x/40x phase contrast slider and brightfield. Mechanical stage as option.Ĭoaxial coarse (adjustable tension) and fine focusing mechanism with limit stop to prevent the contact between objective and specimen. Quintuple revolving nosepiece, rotation on ball bearings. WF10x/22 mm, high eye-point and with rubber cups. Dioptric adjustment on the left eyepiece tube. 3-position filter holder blue and green filtesets included. Brightfield, phase contrast, LED fluorescence.

National usb microscope driver