: microscopy : I built a scanning laser confocal microscope
Community for identifying and discussing microphotographs as well as microscopy techniques and microbial life in general. Researcher or microscope owner with some cool pics? Share it with us! Saw a weird critter in your pond samples the other day? Show us here and maybe we can sort out what it is!
Note: This is a public subreddit, so please avoid posting unpublished data unless you wouldn't mind it being distributed far and wide.
I hope this is OK, mods let me know if this is too off-topic. I recently made a scanning laser confocal microscope and thought it might be interesting to folks here. :)
My system is pretty much entirely 3D printed: the motion stage is using the open source OpenFlexure microscope stage, and the optical train has various optical components housed in 3D printed holders.
I managed to get some decent images off the microscope, and also some duds. As it turns out, there is a lot of nuance to processing the data that comes off the machine. It also takes a _very_ long time to scan: one of my larger scans took 63 continuous hours... and that's after a lot of optimization to bring the time down :)
