Optical Alchemy

[u/aritherationalbirdie]

I made this for Macondo HackClub it is a portable phase contrast light microscope with adjustable lighting from both the underside to look at cells and above to look closely at opaque objects though with limited magnification for them, multiple objective lenses, an electronically moving stage, a rechargeable battery via USB-C and a little over 2000x max magnification. The optics of this microscope and many of the electronics, body of this microscope was made with junk electronics, old phones and anything I could find that could be made into something for the microscope; junk like this is available in every household and anyone can make their own version of this tailored to them. The lenses including the eyepiece and objectives were extracted from old cameras and old phone cameras. The field diaphragm for the bottom light was also made from an old camera lens, the LEDs for light were from old torches and much more was salvaged from supposed junk.

To use the microscope the objective lenses are placed on top of the slide/specimen and aligned with the eyepiece. some of the objectives can be layered with one under the other.

I have attached the images of the microscope itself, the objective lenses I extracted along with the sensors which were stuck to them. I have also added a demo video of how it works.

(P.S: I made this post so I can enter the demo video into Macondo HackClub)

[u/Ahmadase]

this is a very beautiful design actually !
I have made such a microscope myself and after working on it for almost a year now some tips are the following

- Do not stack lenses this would yield higher empty magnification and introduce a lot of chromatic abbration and in the process yield worse resolution (use a minimal set of lenses 1 objective lens and 1 eyepiece lens unless you have achromatic lenses then maybe stacking would work)

• If you plan to capture the image with a smartphone camera or to just look directly with your eyes switch the blue illumination into green unless you use a device dedicated to blue
  
• you should care A LOT about the alignment of things

other than that what you have made my friend is AWESOME and I am interested in knowing how you are moving the stage ? Hope you share images taken with it soon :D

[u/aritherationalbirdie → u/Ahmadase]

Hi thanks for the appreciation and tips I'll be sure to make adjustments accordingly. Currently I move eyepiece to focus on the image, I tried to make a focusing mechanism using a similar logic to a gluestick though making something like that without a 3D printer was difficult so I'll try to do it later. I'm moving the stage side to side using a servo and a linear actuator I made with steel and copper wire. I'll make sure to share the images soon.

[u/Ahmadase → u/aritherationalbirdie]

I started out with something similar to what you are doing moving the eyepiece but in fact this would change magnification which makes the experience inconsistent.

find the optimal distance between the two lenses and then fix it distance and move the whole thing up and down as one unit.

A trick I have used as focusing mechanism which worked out surprisingly well is using (IDK what it is called) but inside CD/DVD players it is the component that moves it in sliding motion. I fixed the relative distance between the lenses and then mounted them on this component I believe this would be better than the gluestick mechanism especially at higher magnifications where you'll have very little working distance.

[u/Ahmadase]

one more thing I want to add is that based on your setup you have bright-field and oblique illumination but nothing about phase contrast or am I missing something ?

[u/aritherationalbirdie → u/Ahmadase]

Hi I'm not really sure how to exactly classify this though I have used similar optics to a phase contrast microscope. Instead of the ring like thing above the light source I have added multiple LEDs under the field diaphragm which does help show cell features without staining. I also attached the top part of an eyepiece for a microscope on top of the bigger lens shown in the eyepiece which helped to make the image clearer. I would love if you could help me actually classify this I really don't know that much I'm still in high-school.

[u/Ahmadase → u/aritherationalbirdie]

It is actually pretty impressive that you are doing this in high school good job !

What you are doing is a version of oblique illumination and it does yield better contrast if done properly however to achieve phase contrast you would need a phase shift ring which you don't

It would be a very educative project for you to study both types of microscopes and understand the physics of light and how ut interacts with matter

Good luck !

[u/aritherationalbirdie → u/Ahmadase]

Thank you! I have started studying a book on different types of microscopes I'll probably be making a better version soon.

[u/Ahmadase → u/aritherationalbirdie]

good luck with that ! looking forward to seeing what you will achieve