TNP #3 - Zeiss Microscope LED Upgrade & Differential Interference Contrast (DIC) Microscopy Preview 

It's not the best idea to have a big area LED in this setup. Our aim (I'm a Zeiss developer) is to have a point like source as collimation is designed so that a point source optimally fills the back focal plane. Modern LED sources use fiber guides. However in the olden days indescandend bulbs needed to be aligned so that the filament is never reflected onto itself which would lower the lamp life. Also when aligning you should remove the objective and aim for uniform illumination with the adjustment screws on the lamp house. Usually you will see the filament and it's reflection when you hold a piece of paper in the back focal plane. With halogen lamp make sure to have filament and reflection on top of each other. This no longer applies for you but make sure even illumination when the objective is removed. After that you can proceed with Koehler illumination setup to get the best possible Abbe limited resolution.

I wanna know where to find dumpsters like yours!

Nice clean mod. Those objectives look really sharp.

Amazing! I love how you don't waste time on unnecessary things. With your level of skill, you could have designed your own PSU and buck converter to run the LED and fan, but you went with easy available solutions.

Such exquisite optics! Zeiss builds some wonderful optical systems. One of my expensive hobbies is amateur astronomy and astrophotography. I own a number of Astro-Physics telescope, which are just wonderful, including a 155mm (6") aperture apochromatic triplet (with hand figured, oil spaced lenses). So wonderfully color corrected, high contrast and a joy for planetary observations. Some years ago, during a Mars opposition, I had a rare opportunity to observe Mars through my scope's very limited production big-brother.. the 8 inch aperture version of my scope, another hand-figured triplet refractor. And to top it off, the owner had a Zeiss binocular view and Zeiss orthoscopic lenses. This was just about a religious experience! The Zeiss optics, both the binoviewer and eyepieces had very little scattering which presented such a wonderful high-contrast image.. Just a joy to behold! The "problem" with optics like these is the same as test equipment -- there's this asymptotic curve when you plot cost against performance. Eeeking out that next few percent of performance costs many $$$ as your well up the steep part of the curve. One of my scopes, my pride-and-joy, cost more than the first car I purchased new.. it's hard to explain to normal people why you'd do such a thing!

I love how the optics on this 'old' microscope are still magnificent. Great job bringing this back to life!

It's hard to believe the resolution of such a shallow depth of field with natural light illumination. Adding to the great history of optics!

Would love to see analysis of some active differential probe amplifier ASICs. Or high speed ADCs/DACs.

How about decapping Starlink ASICs and looking under this beast!

Great find and very interesting capabilities.

Wow. Nice score. The image is really sharp and no chromatic aberrations or vignetting. That is really good.

Amazing that you can see such details! I like the "noise path" videos. Also, I am sure there is a noise path designed into all complex systems :)

Impressive! Congratulation with "the new" Axioplan! Thanks.

Awesome microscope images. And some one throw it away, but you found it and now you can make us drool at the chip images. More of them with your nice explanations. BTW, your explanations are what really make the difference. Thanks for the knowledge you gives us.

Great work! Especially imaging the surface roughness by manufacturing tolerances. You could use those images now and simulate it with FEM (e.g. HFSS, CST) to determine in detail the influence of the manufacturing tolerances on the results.

Oh yes that's mean great stuff are coming , I can't wait for reverse Engineering RF/high speed circuits at the die level .

Saved from trash? Whenever I am at the local recycling site, I look for a Carl Zeiss phase contrast microscope, but all I can find is some crt TVs, broken laptops and a keyboard with what looks like cat vomit on it. I’ll just keep looking - might get lucky some day.

Looks Great,

Nice, I won a Nikon Optiphot 66 in a raffle at work a couple months ago, then spent money to get the parts off ebay to add DIC to it, it does both Diascopic and Episcopic light paths. Fun stuff, I put my Canon 5D Mark III and it's ok for this.

this looks like the predecessor to the confocal microscopy, they do some pretty amazing stuff with those, servos to move the optics around guided by software and you get a 3d representation of the stuff you're looking at... regarding the halogen lamp - I think they use them still because of the emitted light spectrum, LEDs can have dips in the spectrum which may hide some detail in the sample

Wow! I had to build my equipment with parts I bought off of eBay. I can't imagine what the equipment you have cost when new. Anyway, I'd like to suggest you try out focus stacking. The technique allows you to build an image where pretty much every layer appears in focus. There are a few free focus stacking programs you can use to see if you like the technique. Some of these programs can also display the image in such a way as to produce a more 3D look. These tools are truly amazing.

Thanks. Ha my school days when I searched for a microscope and swapped a model locomotive for a brass beauty!.

wow! great stuff...cheers.

Wonderful!

Ohhh, I'm hoping that video means an upcoming dishy IC reverse engineering! :)

by the way common misconception it is not the oil it is the salt on your fingers, important difference

Finally THz and not that GHz rubbish.

That is a very nice microscope, can you do a video about how components on an IC die look (so I know where I am looking at through my microscope) and the physics behind the shapes.

What are the squares around? Are those just to maintain uniform metal layer fill percentage for uniform etch, like on PCBs? Sorry if question is lame, never designed a chip, but did quite a number of PCBs.

Amazing picture quality, really pumped for more of this! Btw, who put "hugo" on the top metal layer in Katakana? Is this an easter egg from the manufacturer?

Not sure how you used the DIC with the epi illumination. You need the Optovar setting with the polarizer. What would be interesting for you is the Zernecke phase contrast. But for that you need PH (1...3) marked objectives. They have a semitransparent phase ring (quarter wavelength). And also a corresponding dark field aperture in the filterchanger I think. Nonetheless there is a "digital" equivalent image processing (TIE) that I developed for Zeiss. With that you need two images at different focus. Positions. The transport of intensity equation (TIE) algorithm transforms every camera pixel into its corresponding phase shift of the partial coherent light reflected from the sample. Maybe something of interest to you?

Great microscope find, and geat conversion! Would a higher CRI led do anything or improve polarisation?

Some LED makers offer very high CRI so that might be a future upgrade. . .

Pashmaam!!!

I liked digital powermeter.Where buy this?

Did you check the spectrum of the LED? What were the results? BTW: Can I recommend the Nikon D7100 as a replacement for the d700. I still own both. The D7100 has a smaller sensor but a higher pixel count and a much wider dynamic range. It's also great for astrophotography.

great Shahriar , wonder which FAB you use for manufacturing your chip ?! how much did cost ?!

Could it be that one reason to use a halogen lamp is the very broad spectrum of light wavelengths emitted? In order to kind of replicate that, using a high CRI LED would make sense. :)

Chip ID ICCTRDUP? CMC microsystems, TR = Toronto? All my chips in grad school were ICKAAxxx - university of Alberta, built in the Dalsa 300V CMOS process through CMC! That is a pretty nice microscope - even nicer than the one on the probe station I used in grad school. What really got me is the microscope we had for taking die photos for thesis or papers was really crappy! I tried to attach a camera to the probe station microscope, but we didn't have the right adapter, and my supervisor didn't want to spend money to get one made in the machine shop, so all my die photos in my thesis are terrible!

Likely the illumination will not be as good with the LED due to the large source area. Also halogens are still mainstream on microscopes like this because of their perfect CRI. Looks great though

😲😲😲

How education enriches life...

Wouldn't this video be called The Optical Path?

That's a bit odd; it's labelled West Germany, and it's Karl Zeis - i must've missed a memo, because all i know is that their HQ is in the town Jena, which is near the middle of what was East Germany, eastern Thuringia. Now i wonder, did the Karl Zeis company maintain subsidiaries in both Germanies? (LOL, i've used a plural of a country * nerd giggles *)

Nice scope. Even though you had removed the sensitive parts, I had to cringe a little bit when you said you took a grinder to a part of the microscope. You really should look into getting a mill. An old knee mill or used table top mill should not be too hard to find or cost too much.

Is that round white cover on the front base foot a port for additional light source? On mine (cheap Chinesium) it just a white disc painted black on the backside for image contrast?

Shahriar finds Ziess microscopes in his trash, Dave Jones finds industrial computers and flat screen TV's in the dumpster. In my trash I find, you know, trash. What am I doing wrong?

Are you sure you have reflected light differential interference contrast setup? That is quite expensive stuff - not to be thrown away that easy.

The Noise Path? It's a new brand name or some sort of new channel?

Where is this mythical trash can? Please tell us

interesting

How can't I find something like this in trash can?😁

How much would a microscope like this cost?

Why change from halogen?

Updated your channel name?

ヒューゴって？

I don't find this kind of trash at my house.

Can anyone here point me in the right direction? I'm trying to buy used electronics testing equipment. Like, old surplus hardware at an auction or something. Don't know if I'm making sense buttt, help lol