from Hacker News

The OpenFlexure 3D printable microscope

by enceladus06 on 11/12/24, 1:18 PM with 20 comments

• by moffkalast on 11/15/24, 11:53 AM

  I'm wondering now there if are any cheap entry level stereo microscopes or at least any microscopes that work with indirect reflected light instead of through-slide illumination. LEDs have gotten laughably strong, so if we can turn a night forest into day, surely we can illuminate some microbes?

  These standard ones are certainly useful for high magnification, but they don't really work at all for anything opaque. For the average person doing this on a hobby level, looking at random objects slightly beyond macro level is far more interesting than having to painfully prepare slides for things you aren't even sure are actually there or not.

• by hifikuno on 11/15/24, 2:59 AM

  This is amazing. I think this would be a fun project for me and the kids to make and have a useful tool to help them with their curiosity.

• by roflmaostc on 11/15/24, 10:32 AM

  There is a similar project called UC2 where the emphasis is on modularity of the different configurations (simple building blocks) https://github.com/openUC2/UC2-GIT

• by geokon on 11/15/24, 4:03 PM

  This is outside my area of expertise .. But I'd be surprised if you can easily best a phone camera without paying obscene dollars for special sensors

  A bit of an anecdote, but a lab in our building got some expensive fancy digital microscope. But we noticed that if you took a cheap old school microscope and stuck an iPhone on the lens the resulting images were infinitely more crisp vivid and high-res

  The only obstacles are getting consistent colors and calibration as well as making a mount to hold the phone at the right distance from the lens

• by ahmadmijot on 11/15/24, 10:25 AM

  btw, the OpenFlexure forum link is 404.