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Comment by sbr464 | Hacker News Reader

I was needing a fully digital (controlled) microscope stage and stand recently. I was suprised to find a lack of motorized stages compared to other items. It would be nice to have a modular stage so it could be used with different stands. Rotation and height adjustment would be nice as well.

Have you came across anything similar? It seems like it would be trivial to build similar to your other designs.

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I have been thinking about this problem for a while. I would like a cheap, open source, commercially available kit for xyz gantry systems. That's essentially what desktop CNC machines and 3D printers are and people hack them for all kinds of purposes.

Unfortunately my current conclusion is that there is no solution that satisfies all 3 at the moment. Your best bet for building such a system is looking at cheap 3D printers and CNC machines, but it'll always be a little bit of a hack and extra work because you'll have to remove parts (hot end, drill bit..) and adapt something that was not designed with the intent of being entirely re-purposed.

If anyone here knows of a xyz gantry system kit that satisfies all 3 (cheap, open source, commercially available) please let me know.

It would be fairly trivial to build. Basically, it is just a CoreXY 3d printer without the head.

I have modified a small CNC mill/router to be used as a "paste printer" for printing frosting/ceramic (https://youtu.be/XwjnVzfl0wA). Many people in the 3d printing community have done similar things with their printers.

I would recommend something without a bed that moves in the XY direction. CoreXY designs would be great but there may be limitations on the carriage weight. In that case a gantry style cartesian printer would be suitable but with 2 Y motors to carry the X stage without skipping.

Edit: Also, See Openbuilds.com there are many machines that fit what you are looking for.

Looking at openbuilds.com, in terms of functionality it definitely fits the bill, I'll look at the designs with care.

I'd like to have a generic open source xyz gantry platform that I could just order on amazon for <$200 and tinker around with.

i built a light microscope that could scan 96 well slides using a 3-axis stacked configuration of these linear actuators: https://openbuildspartstore.com/c-beam-xlarge-x-y-table-bund... and https://openbuildspartstore.com/c-beam-linear-actuator-bundl...

I used RAMPS to control the steppers.

not clear if it satisfies your open source criterion.

Can you provide some links/example to your usage of a gantry system? I don't typically use that term, curious to your exact usage.

Gantry style as I use the term describes a machine that has 2 Y rails carrying an X rail. All rails are independently powered so each has a motor/drive and all of the rails are supported above the work area. There are several 3d printers that use this configuration but not all of them are necessarily the exact design I would use.

Here is a couple videos of one I made using "PBC Linear SIMO stages" it uses 10 start, 25mm/turn leadscrews so it is a bit louder than normal printers. https://youtu.be/fQ9PoQIl7q4 https://youtu.be/zG-eEfDkFBo

Thanks for clarifying :)

Ooo this could be a great extension of the current microscope system! The only thing I've found is this https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2525155 which while not motorized, allows for height adjustments.

Consider making an issue (tagged improvement) on the GitHub page!

https://github.com/pachterlab/poseidon

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