[LolWolf]

ah I see!

Yes this is very cool (hope you make it open source :) but have you taken a peek at the openflexure project? They make a fully motorized 3-axis microscope that is 3d printed and relatively inexpensive (parts+motors+electronics - PLA net out to USD 250?)

it’s very cool! maybe you can also take some ideas from there :)

https://openflexure.org/

[dekhn]

I don't particularly like the openflexure approach. Instead, I build stages similar to standard XY stages: https://www.asiimaging.com/products/stages/xy-inverted-stage... which uses standard motion components (linear rail and linear bearings, 3d printer style steppers), all of which gets mounted on aluminum extrusion (4040). Then the illuminator and camera just get mounted on the aluminum extrusion.

It's pretty close to the Thorlabs Cerna, https://www.thorlabs.com/cerna-r-series-modular-microscopy-s... although I just do low-magnification light microscopy.

[LolWolf]

I see, what’s the min step size you’re going for?

[dekhn]

typically around one micron (which is about the same as one pixel with my objective and camera). I am not trying to take min steps. I'd rather have smooth motion, with fairly high accuracy.

The current system I am building is mainly optimized around scanning large areas quickly; I have already demonstrated that I can create accurate stitches by moving, stopping, taking photo, repeat, but it's slow (due to the stopping) so I am working on an approach that keeps the stage moving constantly, but triggers a bright flash that freezes intermediate exposures. This gives a good 10X speedup over the simpler model of move/stop/photo/repeat but brings in a number of other challenges.

[LolWolf]

ah very cool, I see!

good luck! are you posting updates anywhere?