[time-nuts] Working with SMT parts.

Brooke Clarke brooke at pacific.net
Fri Aug 12 22:31:19 EDT 2016


Hi Steve:

If you are going to be soldering then you NEED stereo vision, a monitor screen will not work at all.  You need depth 
perception as well as magnification.  Think of the microscope as part of a feedback loop that includes your eyes and 
muscles.  With a stereo microscope you can make much smaller hand movements which are required when working with small 
pitch ICs.

-- 
Have Fun,

Brooke Clarke
http://www.PRC68.com
http://www.end2partygovernment.com/2012Issues.html
The lesser of evils is still evil.

-------- Original Message --------
> Can anyone compare the stereo microscope to a camera/monitor for use with SMT? I have a cheap stereo microscope that I 
> would like to replace with either a much better stereo microscope or a camera/monitor. Is there a marked advantage(s) 
> of one versus the other?  I have no "floaters" to contend with.
>
> Steve, K8JQ
>
> On 8/11/2016 4:06 PM, Chuck Harris wrote:
>> Lots of good suggestions have already been made, but for
>> me, a boom style stereo microscope, with a distance between
>> the objective, and the focal point of at least 3 inches works
>> fairly well...
>>
>> One other thing that may force your decision, if you are
>> older, your eyes will likely have lots of "floaters", which
>> are debris that floats around in your eyeballs.  This debris
>> floats in and out of the center of your field of view, and
>> looks like a bunch of translucent worms, or shadows.
>>
>> Your brain, the magnificent organ that it is, tries to compensate
>> for your eye's degradation, and as long as your eyes can move
>> about in your field of view, it effectively removes the floaters
>> from the scenes you are viewing.
>>
>> However, if you use a stereo microscope, your eye position
>> is fixed by the very limited amounts of off axis motion
>> that will allow a through optical channel.  This lack of off
>> axis motion will emphasize your floaters in a great way, and you
>> will see *every* *single* *one*, clearly, as if it were something
>> you really wanted to view.  Some times, the floaters will cover
>> the exact thing you need to see clearly, and you will have to
>> move it off axis by moving it on the microscope stage.
>>
>> The only answer to this problem, is to either have perfect eyes,
>> or to use a microscope where you are looking at a screen, rather
>> than through a pair of oculars.  This way, your eyes can dart
>> around, and inspect what they need to see clearly, and the
>> floaters will be ignored by your brain.
>>
>> As far as I know, there is only one optical microscope built this
>> way, and it is the very expensive Mantis.
>>
>> Because of the great expense of flat screen optical microscopes,
>> most modern SMD viewing equipment is going to the trivially cheap
>> method of using a CCD/CMOS color video camera and an LCD screen.
>>
>> You can do a lot with a cheap USB camera mounted to a boom, a fiber
>> optic light source, or a ring light, and a laptop computer to
>> display the image.
>>
>> -Chuck Harris
>>
>> Bob Albert via time-nuts wrote:
>>> What are the important parameters regarding purchase of a stereo microscope?  I
>>> see some on ebay for around $50; are those good? Bob
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