Microscope for smd rework.

My eyes are going cross eyed from using my opti-visor so much and I am tired of having to swamp out between my 2.5 & 3.5 was thinking of just going to a microscope like the one below.

http://www.amazon.com/AmScope-SE400-Z-Professional-Microscope-Magnification/dp/B005C75IVM

Anyone using a microscope or a similar setup and can tell me if found something cheaper or works better?

Looks like they have a 5/10X one as well probably better than the 20x

http://www.amazon.com/AmScope-SE400X-Professional-Microscope-Magnification/dp/B0056X4RRS

Thanks

Looks good, I especially like the stand, that will make it very flexible.

I use a 40 year old Olympus zoom stereo microscope. It will be optically better than the one you suggest, but without the long arm it is not so flexible.

oh that does sound nice djozz can you zoom out to like 5x to see more of the board?

I found you can buy different optics for that microscope so I’m going with the 5x + 10x to start with also going to grab the 5mp camera for it and see if i can get video to my monitor that should be a cool feature.

I was thinking on converting some better webcam (microsoft or logitech) for this purpose!

A camera is a useful alternative but it is a serious help with these stereo microscopes that vision is really direct and you maintain 3D vision.

Agree, but used webcam is 5-10$ (can’t beat that price with fancy stereo microscope) and most of other stuff like mounting system can be fabricated from scrap that we all have in our “workshops”. Tricky question is optics for this build…

With the 10x eyepieces, it zooms from 7x to 40x. I have an extra 0.75x objective for it but don't use it.

Cool!

Well thanks for chiming in I thought a good microscope would make building drivers a bit easier. Glad to know I was right.

That’s a really good point on the camera. I didn’t think of that but hey for 50 dollars I can at least make some cool videos as well as pictures for posts with it.

I have that microscope with the 5x, 10x and 15x lenses. It works well. My only two complaints are the narrow field of view and the position of the light. With the 15x lenses the field of view is roughly 14mm x 14mm. Some type of ring light would be an improvement since the one that comes with the microscope tends to cast shadows.

You can make stereo with two webcams — put the resulting image side by side.
I did it using EvoCam quite a while ago

There are also some security camera tools that let you place 2 camera feeds wherever you want them.

So you pick side by side, choose left or right for either cross-eyed or wall-eyed stereo.

With a decently fast computer this works in real time on the screen.
You probably need what’s called a “lorgnette” 3D viewer ($3 plastic wedge prisms, Google finds them)
to make it easier to fuse side-by-side images)

Well there’s your problem right there. :stuck_out_tongue:

Chuckle.

I have a theory learned from a teenager about all these people walking around with their noses in their phones.

They’re all myopic, don’t want to wear glasses or contact lenses, so they walk around using the phone’s camera to see where they’re going.
Hey, they can focus at 3” and still get a clear (enough) view of everything in front of them ….