USB Microscope/Mag Lens Stand

by solara70 in Circuits > Electronics

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USB Microscope/Mag Lens Stand

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You can pick up these cheap USB microscopes for £10 and they offer alot of bang for your buck. The 1600x zoom is exaggerated sales marketing hype, its more likely 100x or less, but its good enough for most home use applications.

My dislikes with this microscope are the flimsy lightweight stand.
Unable to get a plan birds eye view.

My particular need for this microscope is for working with SMT PCB boards. It's needed for the occasional troubleshooting/diagnosing/repair use, rather than daily use. I can't really justify the cost and bench space for a professional swing arm microscope setup.

So I need a stable adjustable stand for my cheap USB scope so I can use a hot airgun, soldering iron, multimeter probes comfortably.

Let's see what I can muster up.

Make a Stand

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You can buy cheap plastic stands for these scopes, but I need something more sturdy and can be used around a hot air gun. Plus I cant wait for a slow boat from china. So I had a dig around the workshop and came up with this design.

Alloy bracket for base and upstand.
Sliding draw runner for vertical upstanding rider.
A thumb screw to lock the vertical riser height.
A bolt and wing nuts for the risers horizontal spacer.
A big clip to hold the scope (you could use something like a big hair clip)

The pictures should give you a good idea of how its put together.
The draw runner has a couple of threaded holes which can be used to lock tighten the adjustable height.

The major height adjustment can be done by sliding the runner up/down. If minor adjustment is required, this can be done using the scopes focus adjust roller or by grip adjusting the sliding vertical runner and tightening the thumb screw to hold the position.

Dont forget the obligatory rubber feet!

Put It to Work

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This scope has a dual USB connector allowing you to connect to your PC or tablet or Phone.

The resolution is only 640x480 but it's good enough for my needs for now.

The focal distance of about 2 inches gives me enough work area without sacrificing too much focus area.

I did try an open up the scope to see if I could move the lens nearer the CCD, to gain more focal distance for the same zoom factor. However the threaded lens is a cheap push fit with a collar stop. Seems like it's pretty close to the CCD, so will leave as is.

I got sidetracked with this. Now, back to the mac book repair!

30x Mag Lens Holder

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I improvised this handy "always on" magnifying lens adapter.

The magnifying glass was about £8 on ebay and is battery powered by 2 feeble aaa batteties for led illlumination.The double lens is 30x and glass, so quite heavy to hold. Unlike advertised, it only has 3 uni direction leds under the handle, but glass lens was a bonus.

Lets fix the shortcomings!

I modified thie mag lens, to make it lithium powered for longer battery life, and added some radial leds (to prevent shadowing). See attached pictures. It uses a tp4056 usb charger, auto up/down 3.3v buck boost regulator, 18650 battery and 3 white 5mm leds. Dremel out the old to make space for the new!

The stand was adapted to hold the lens with a couple of slip on cable ties and filler block which fitted quite nicely.

The focal distance is about 5 inches, so plenty of workspace room for tools underneath. A nice big well lit zoom area too!