ebay microscope

I won an auction for an old toolmakers microscope on ebay for £17, after struggling with the plastic RS one (the bulb went in the first night of use).

Desktop tooling microscope. on eBay, also Other Measuring Tools, Measuring Tools, Industrial Tools, Business, Office Industrial (end time 19-Nov-08 12:21:05 GMT)

It's made by "Rank", and has the little "guy hitting a gong" logo, which I find kind of cool in some sad way :)

It arrived last night covered in sticky goo (oil? It smelled funny), which cleaned off easily with some moist kitchen paper with a dab of washing-up liquid on it.

It is lit from below using a bulb in the base (which had gone as well :) ), but I don't think that would be very useful for me anyway. I popped a razor I am struggling with under there and used a flashlight moved around it to see what was going on - I think it's only 30x, but there seemed to be much more detail, showing that the bevel was only formed on one side, the other was only half there. Under the handheld one even at 100x, I couldn't see that chipping.

It also has angle lines and scale markings that I can see through the lens, but these aren't too useful at the moment, unless it matters exactly how wide my bevel is. It will let me check for even-ness, I guess.

One problem is that there isn't enough room under there to move the blade around. I might stick a hole-saw on my drill and cut a hole in the back of what feels like cast-aluminium. Also, it has a movable platform with a V, to hold tools I imagine. Not too useful for holding a razor, from what I can tell, so I might have to modify that as well, removing it or swapping it for something a little more home-made.

I have no real experience with microscopes, but I was searching around and saw that people sell different eyepiece and objective lenses. I was wondering if I could just swap out the 10x eyepiece for a 20x or the 3x objective for one with more power, letting me inspect the blade at different magnifications? They seem pretty cheap, from what I can see. I also found lots of information about tube length, thread size etc. so I need to get some measuring done I think!

Pretty happy with my purchase! It is built like a tank, and it will show me what I am doing wrong. With everything I do, I hate to just be told what works. I need to know why, and "feel" it for myself, and this will help me learn that.

Usually the optics dictate how much accurate magnification you will get. reminds me of telescope makers who claim a scope costing a couple hundred bucks will give several hundred diameters of mag. It will but you can't see anything because the image quality will be so poor. So the moral is stick with what came with it. If you want more magnification buy a higher quality microscope.