[HN Gopher] Making the Electron Microscope
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Making the Electron Microscope
Author : mailyk
Score : 46 points
Date : 2025-10-26 16:46 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.asimov.press)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.asimov.press)
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Really nicely-done article. I suppose that if there was any
| resentment on Ruska's part over losing the patent race to
| Ruedenberg, it was smoothed over when he (and not Ruedenberg) was
| awarded the physics Nobel.
|
| It would have been interesting to hear why Ruedenberg wasn't
| considered for the prize.
| alansaber wrote:
| Interesting how they continued manufacturing these during ww2
| godelski wrote:
| Fun fact, you can make a basic scope at home. It definitely is
| not easy but probably not as expensive as you might think
| (actually not much at all!).
|
| Ben Krasnow (Applied Science) has a few videos and blog posts on
| the topic[0,1,2]. The Tungsten Filaments can be expensive, but I
| sent an email to the company and they sent me some samples to
| play with. It's been years so I forgot who I contacted. I tried
| the Nalgene bottle method but honestly I could not get it to hold
| a tight enough vacuum. The electron beam was very unstable and it
| is just really hard to purge and backfill the "chamber". The
| hardest part is getting the beam control circuit. I never got
| that refined myself for clear images, but I'm sure I could have
| gotten it with more time (it was a DIY work project so other
| things took priorities[3]). For our purposes the beam mattered
| more, so we went with what we could get. But even "failing" I
| learned a lot and it was a ton of fun. It's pretty exciting to
| get a beam to produce.
|
| And keep in mind, even if you do get it fully running you
| shouldn't expect it to be anywhere near on par with the
| professional ones. Machining is great these days and we have a
| lot of advantages we can leverage as even hobbyists that shops
| couldn't get even a few decades ago, but we're talking about a
| high precision machine.
|
| If the idea of having one for fun excites you, then it is worth
| the go. It was one of the most fun things I've ever made (maybe
| only next to a sputtering gun, which was _very_ successful). If
| you can CAD, do some basic electronics, have a lot of patience,
| and a decent vacuum pump[4], then you should give it a go.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIJ1jI1xDhY
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdjYVF4a6iU
|
| [2] https://benkrasnow.blogspot.com/2014/04/electron-beam-
| contro...
|
| [3] Resources were tight enough that I think I could have done
| better if I decided to fund it myself. Big thing I would say is
| that whenever working with vacuum stuff don't take shortcuts.
| It's better to act like a perfectionist as it'll save you time in
| the long run. When you're working with tiny things, well... the
| little things matter lol
|
| [4] I mean a vacuum pump, not a roughing pump. You don't need a
| turbo, but you do need a high vacuum.
| colingauvin wrote:
| I am a cryo-electron microscopist (TEM), will keep an eye on this
| thread in case there's any specific questions.
|
| (Also have done Xray crystallography)
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| Are there any new developments on the technical side of
| microscopy such as new materials or techniques? What journals
| or trade papers are reliable in researching this information?
|
| How does one become a microscopist as a profession? It seems
| like a specialized field with a narrow entry point and a lot of
| hoops.
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