[dekhn]

Building a science grade microscope that can be used to produce research-grade results is not a trivial problem. Sure you can strap a few lenses and steppers to a frame and make a microscope but that's a very long distance from being able to produce quantitative results of other scientists care about.

[iheartmemcache]

I think you misunderstood me when I said "name-brand". I don't mean some 30 dollar microscope with $20 glass lapped with 2 passes of alumina 35 micron by a 12 year old in a Chinese sweatshop. Those brands I mentioned were (and apparently still are) more than good enough to get you into industry primer publications. This[1] is literally a random paper I picked off of Nature Medicine. I intentionally chose the first DOI from Nature Medicine I saw to get it as 'random' as possible. (Nikkor is the trademark Nikon used to use to indicate their high-end domestically manufactured equipment.)

Hmm, Nikon, check. Agilent, check. Zeiss, check. Hell, everything in that paper, from the Sigma-Aldrich sourced chemicals to the BioGen PCR sequencer is 100% bog standard. Go pick up this months copy of any journal of medicine (hard medicine, not like, psychiatry -- JAMA, NE Journal of Medicine, Cell, whatever) and see what hit-rate you have with those 5 brands. "Research quality science equipment" is bog standard.

In fact, I was curious to see what equipment the CRISPR-Cas9 guys were using, because I mean cleaving nt's is about as low-level as anyone with an MD/PhD is going to get. (It also meets your "research-grade" criteria, cause, you know, its CRISPR-CAS9.)[2] Same brands, more sensitive equipment, still pretty bog standard. Again, semi-conductor equipment from the mid 2000s still has it beat for requirements re: sterile conditions for SiO seed -> ingot growth, re: resolution by an order of magnitude (at least) for making chip masks, re: chemical purity when CVD'ing your poly/metals, and for resolution re: SEM/FIB'ing for inspecting your wafers.

[1] https://i.imgur.com/IC56Nxj.png [2] https://i.imgur.com/EAQo77W.png

[dekhn]

you're talking $50-100K of investment to buy that Nikon scope.