[HN Gopher] DIY Macro PCB Photography
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       DIY Macro PCB Photography
        
       Author : dsalzman
       Score  : 62 points
       Date   : 2024-03-17 01:13 UTC (21 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (niemczuk.tech)
 (TXT) w3m dump (niemczuk.tech)
        
       | s0rce wrote:
       | Labsmore is a commercial option with open source software, >10x
       | cheaper than the existing microscope vendors.
       | https://www.labsmore.com/
        
         | mk_stjames wrote:
         | I want to point out that the Genmitsu 3018 desktop CNC that
         | their $4400 microscope is based on is $330 on Amazon. It's hard
         | not to recognize.
         | 
         | I think one could assemble the remaining optical path and
         | camera for less than the remaining $4070.
         | 
         | Well, I know so, because, I did exactly that several years ago
         | with a telecentric lens form Edmunds and a industrial C-mount
         | camera back and an even cheaper 3018 CNC for automated
         | inspection and archival scanning of PCBs. (telecentric lens due
         | to the boards being populated with components, this helps
         | capture them without focus stacking and without perspective).
        
           | myself248 wrote:
           | I just picked up some Opto-E telecentric lenses with this
           | exact idea in mind. (That plus possibly scanning microfiche
           | so I don't have to mess with focus.)
           | 
           | If I can do it on a small scale with my long-suffering Ender
           | 3 (which keeps getting weirder and weirder stuff stuck to
           | it), then transplanting it to a larger motion platform is
           | trivial.
           | 
           | What did you do for software?
        
           | anfractuosity wrote:
           | Have you come across these type of things
           | https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001351566621.html that
           | appear to behave like a metallurgical microscope.
           | 
           | I'm kind of tempted. I assume the objectives aren't infinity
           | corrected?
           | 
           | Just found - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_IWTq-TSiU
           | which shows something similar. It looks like there's a ring
           | that seems to adjust magnification on it, unless I'm
           | mistaken.
           | 
           | I've got a DIY XY stage and would like to attach something
           | like that too it, to image large objects (I've got a BHM
           | microscope but the stage has only a small degree of
           | movement).
           | 
           | Edit: Just noticed the objectives used are infinity corrected
        
       | londons_explore wrote:
       | What scale is this example?
       | 
       | If those are 5 mil traces with 5 mil spacing, then you might get
       | better performance with a simple smartphone camera. The built in
       | superresoloution algorithms seem to do a decent job on PCB's.
        
         | ACow_Adonis wrote:
         | Yes, I've got the camera bodies, the macro lens, some
         | historical experience stitching the pictures together to form
         | panoramas, and I've just gotten into microscopy and am pretty
         | sure I've got the microscope base he's using too. So I can see
         | an alternative universe where I wrote this xD.
         | 
         | One of the first things I thought when I started was "how can I
         | get the big camera onto the microscope" and the embarrassing
         | conclusion I came to, is if you've got an expensive phone you
         | can get cheap plastic adaptors and just attach it to the
         | microscope body. Basic stereo microscopes are incredibly cheap
         | these days, as are the phone attachments. I use droidcam obs to
         | stream video so I don't even have to physically look into the
         | microscopes any more. The main thing is going into the phone
         | and getting some practice getting everything on manual so phone
         | photo software doesn't do funky things.
         | 
         | My use case is slightly different, but the underlying
         | principles are the same and I'm pretty sure the microscope
         | hardware is identical to that in the post, so rather than
         | rigging up a custom attachment to the expensive camera, I just
         | rig up the phone camera to the already existent hardware of the
         | microscope.
         | 
         | See crab spider for example of one of my earliest tests:
         | https://imgur.com/xLS07WY
        
       | sciento wrote:
       | What's the magnification that you can get with such a setup?
        
         | ACow_Adonis wrote:
         | If you just strap your phone to an actual microscope (see my
         | other post), you're basically just limited to the magnification
         | that the microscopes achieve. And very good performing
         | microscopes are very affordable by hacker news standards these
         | days.
         | 
         | Stereo microscope magnifications are typical at about 20x to
         | 40x, but I'll commonly go to 640x on the biological one, though
         | in practice you bug out at the physical limits of optical
         | microscopy just above 1000x.
         | 
         | His specific setup is presumably limited by the magnification
         | provided by whatever his objective lens achieves.
        
       | zokier wrote:
       | The Hugin output image at the end is pretty rough still :( With
       | all that ado, I was hoping to see better final result
        
         | dekhn wrote:
         | I take a different approach. I use a 2D stage driven by stepper
         | motors and tag each image with the stage position. Then I use
         | ImageJ's Grid Stitching plugin using my captured locations.
         | This isn't really perfect, but you can also have the plugin
         | improve the quality by doing various repairs.
         | 
         | Elsewhere on this thread, some company appears to be re-using
         | the 3018 CNC form factor to build inspection microscopes.
         | That's a remarkably cost-efficient way to get pretty good
         | results in terms of motion. I've also purchased simple 1D
         | stages and stacked them get get a full XYZ stage for very
         | little money.
        
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