Have you tried the Amscope? or are you just guessing?
I don't need super high magnification, just reasonably high and good enough for some HD video.
Of course I don't expect it to be as good as an industry leading one.
*No guess, Tried them at a local microscope dealer and purchased them used with dismal satisfaction. The qualifier here, experience & skilled user of research and lab grade microscopes. For those new to microscopes, Amscope and similar are going to be a LOT better than nothing.
*What troubles me about these made in China microscopes is their overall quality and optical performance. The bodies are made of very soft and low quality aluminum in critical parts with pot metal zinc castings for where they can get away with using it. The knobs are crack prone styrene plastic, the screws are soft with poorly formed threads and heads, the mechanical design is poor. Optically, there is geometric distortion, axial and lateral color problems, field flatness problems and overall low contrast, flare prone and low resolution. This is visible in the sample images posted by the ebay seller.
It appears to be transmitted light (useless for viewing wafers) and only bright field lighting, no dark field and no infinity corrected objectives. All of which are serious limitations for lighting and viewing options.
Why is the lighting on this useless for wafers?
According this:
http://www.microscan.com/en-us/technology/machine%20vision%20lighting/brightfieldanddarkfieldlighting.aspxBrightfield lighting is ideal for bright and shiny reflective surfaces, or which wafer and other metal stuff like bond wires etc will be.
It specifically says it's suitable for wafer viewing.
*Bright field axial light system requires a high quality beam splitter with a very good light system behind it. Beyond this, the objectives need to have low internal reflections to produce a good image.
*Here are some sample images made using various lighting system with a high quality microscope. Note how the different lighting systems affect the image details presented. These are old 4000 series logic and single device dies. Smaller geometries will impose even greater demand on the optical and lighting system.
https://resnicklab.wordpress.com/tag/4000-series/*Have a look at their microscope hardware..
https://resnicklab.wordpress.com/laboratory-resources/microscopy/*Note their Zeiss Ultraphot III, circa late 1960's to 1970's.
"Microscopes have been around for about 500 years- they are one of the oldest scientific instruments that are still in regular use. Obviously, the microscopes we use today greatly outperform the microscopes used by Hooke and van Leeuwenhoek, but you may be surprised to learn that the world’s best microscopes from the 1960s work as well as state-of-the-art microscopes made today."
That statement is why investing in a high quality lab or research grade microscope is worth while and staying away form hobby-entry microscopes is recommended by those with lots of microscope experience.
Agreed. I'm assuming they removable.
And I'm not after a biological microscope, I'm after a metallurgical one. I will be viewing dies, hybrids, bond wires, PCB's in fine detail etc.
*HD video will place high demands on the microscope's optical and lighting system. This will become apparent upon the first imaged made with a less than high quality microscope.
*Magnification is not the important number for microscopes, Image resolution (directly related to NA for a given magnification), contrast, color rendition-color correction, geometric distortion and other non-specificed factors are more importing than the simple magnification number. Adding to this, system flexibility and ability to adapt to imaging requirements, and overall mechanical quality matters.. a great deal.
*This comes from being an owner of a Leitz Ergolux, Zeiss stereo microscope and others. This all began during my years of working with microwave hybrids and trying to understand how die geometry of discrete devices relate to electrical specification and behavior of these devices. Using a high quality microscope is a basic tool for this work.
*Know there is a learning curve to using a microscope and the images viewed using properly adjusted eye pieces to your vision will always be better than recorded images or images presented on a video monitor.
Bernice
Home
Help
Search
Login
Register
