OpenFlexure Microscope | Hacker News Reader

OpenFlexure Microscope

openflexure.org

73 pointso4c14 comments

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2024 (189 points, 20 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42115243

2021 (113 points, 39 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27216452

Yeah, the user 'o4c' appears to be a bot that reposts things that have been previously popular.

Hello, first of all sorry. I am not bot, a human user.

I was searching for open source DIY microscope projects and found the OpenFlexure Microscope as the first search result. After reading through the project and finding it technically interesting, I submitted it to Hacker News. Fortunately, it reached the front page approximately five days after submission.

If you search for the term “open source microscope,” you will see the same link appearing as the top result.

https://www.google.com/search?q=open+source+microscope&oq=op...

From my observation, information related to precision engineering is not widely known and can be difficult to find. Because of this, overlapping submissions can sometimes occur. I apologize if this caused any repetition. Detailed teardowns of precision instruments such as gauges, metrology tools, and scientific equipment are relatively rare, which contributes to this situation.

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Fun old project but the technology has improved[0] since then.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgQbPdiuUTw

Since you seem familiar with this space, are there any other open source well documented projects that I could look at? The nice part about OpenFlexure is the documentation and community. Would be great if I could find another project going the same direction, even if it’s up and coming.

If I may jump in, here's a neat one:

https://www.braillerap.org/en/

I don't work in hardware, but projects like this are inspiring. Taking something expensive and specialized and making it accessible with open designs.

The WHO recognition for low-resource settings is the kind of impact that matters.

The core of a microscope are the lenses. For this, you are required to buy three different ones [1]. One of these can be acquired from Thorlabs for 65 USD [2].

How difficult would it be to build lenses of this quality "at home"?

[1] https://build.openflexure.org/openflexure-microscope/v7.0.0-...

[2] https://www.thorlabs.com/item/AC127-050-A

It's not super practical to make objectives. While I suppose it's technically possible, what you produce will almost certainly be worse, more expensive, and more time-consuming.

$65 for a good lens is really not a huge amount of money; you can also find slightly cheaper lenses (about $20 on aliexpress).

To make a lens like this, you would have to buy a glass blank of the right type (two, actually- a doublet is made of two different types of glass), grind and polish them (very messy), and then bond them and apply an antireflective coating. Getting the lens geometry just right is very challenging. Or you can just give Thorlabs $65 and focus (ha) on building a microscope around it (I do this as a hobby; I'm sitting next to one of those lenses right now).

However, folks do this, see http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/indexmag.html?http://www... but I can tell you from the images that you could get the same results (better really) with a $150 microscope (which also embeds many hundreds of years of practical technology that make your experience significantly better).

Also, if you're really keen on doing it yourself for pedagogical reasons, then have at it, I just don't think it's the best use of time.

You would to fabricate glass with machining precision of better than 10 nanometers. Or injection-molding plastic to similar precisions.

So, buy them.

Amazing and possibly related:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46771881

If you have a 3d printer, I think one of the most practical things you can do is make UC2 cubes (or just buy them). It's simpler to print, a bit more flexible, and a good introduction to the various technologies.

Another 3D printed microscope https://github.com/TadPath/PUMA looks very interesting too.

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