Homemade Well Slides

Homemade Well Slides

After playing around with the well slides from the Tasco well slide kit, I began to wonder if I could create my own.

I tried model clay, making a thin loop, placing it on a regular microscope slide and then laying the cover slip on it. This does work and works well. And is very inexpensive.

Nylon Washer

As can be seen in the pictures above I tried metal washers and nylon washers. For the nylon washer I used clear nail polish to glue it to the slide. These also work. These well slides are good for making hanging drop slides.

Now I have 3d printed my wells and I was able to print different shapes and sizes. Then mounting them again with clear nail polish. With this I found them to be water proof. This allows me to create many different environments to experiment with. For example adding wires to see how electricity affects the environment. Creating mazes to see if micro-organisms will follow them to food sources or retreat from certain chemicals, etc. These can be seen in the photos below.

Well Mounted on Slide With Clear Nail Polish

Different Shape and Sizes

Maze Slides and Electrified Slide

As you can see by creating your own wells you can do many different experiments.

New Finds

I found Tasco well slide kit at a second hand store. It comes with both single and double well slides. The kit has cover slips and a dye Neutral Red. Well slides are used for allowing for live specimens to be monitored and studied. Can be both a dry or an aqueous environment. The aqueous environment can be studied using a drop of water in the well or using a cover slip hanging drop.

 

 

Well Slides

 

This Money detector has a light that shines from underneath with a regular white light or can shine a UV light from above. It has a magnifier you can look at the object from above and a millimeter scale that the object sits on. The UV light can be used to look at petri dishes of bacteria or yeast that have been transformed to glow in the dark. To view crystals and/or rocks for glow in dark properties. 

Money Detector

Remember UV light(radition) is dangerous. Do not look at it and use at your own risk. Understand all the precautions.

Dark-field Microscopy

Dark-field microscopy is when the light from under the specimen is partially blocked. The light does not pass directly through the sample being studied. Instead light is reflected off the specimen, making it appear to be emitting light. Dark-field image may first appear to be a negative of a bright-field image. It works well with live organisms.

 

A simple method is to use a dime placed in the middle of your microscope filter just below the microscope condenser. I recommend putting the dime or dime sized stop(made of thin cardboard coloured black) on a clear piece of plastic to protect the filter from being scratched. If the clear plastic is rigid enough you can replace it for the filter all together. Figures 1 and 2.

Figure 1

 

Figure 2

 

Since I have access to a 3D printer I decided to 3d print them. As can be seen in figure 3, I 3D printed my stops to fit in place of my filter on the microscope. I printed 2 different size stoppers 8 mm and 15 mm.

Figure 3

 

In figure 4 this is a regular image, in figure 5 I use the 8 mm stop. You can see the difference between the 2. The 8 mm stop shows more detail than without any stop. With the 15 mm stop it darkens the field way to much. Figure 6.

Figure 4

 

Figure 5

Figure 6

A very simple and inexpensive addition to many microscopes.

Laser Projector Microscope

Equipment needed:

Laser pointer(green 532 nm) or red, Syringe(10ml), screen or wall, apparatus to hold laser and syringe in place, sample(from my aquarium).

Green Laser Pointer

 

In the diagram above you can see how the microscope is set up. The laser beam runs through the specimen droplet that is formed below the syringe. This produces an image on a screen on the other side of the droplet.

 

 

Image on Screen

Moving the laser closer and further away will bring the object in focus. Even if not completely clear or bright you can see the organisms swimming around. You can make out some detail to try and identify the organism.

 

Beam on Droplet

After reading some more on the laser microscope I found that the drop of water acts as a small spherical lens which magnifies the image. I tried the red laser pointer but the image was not as bright. I will look further into this in the future.

Digital Microscope Version 2

This microscope views the specimen from below. Here I use parts from an old CD-Rom drive, a web cam, block of wood to hold it together, laser pointer lens, some foam board and glue.

Fig. 1

Taking apart the CD-ROM (fig 1) I keep the carriage that moves laser LED along the CD. This allows the specimen stage to move up and down to focus it. The gears on the side are used for the focusing, the bottom gear is used for regular focus and the top gear is used for fine focusing. I manually move the gears. I may look into using the gear motor to electrically move the stage.

Fig. 2

I mount the carriage on a thick piece of wood (fig 2) to allow stage movement and support.

Fig. 3

The specimen mount (fig 2, right of image), is made from foam board. and (fig 3) then mounted on the carriage with Gorilla glue.

Fig. 4

Fig. 5

Fig 4 and 5 show the whole thing put together. You can see the stage is up and then is lowered to focus the image.

To raise the magnification of the camera I used the lens in a cheap laser pointer and mounting it  on the lens of the camera. This does give higher magnification, about 100-150x but is not as powerful as a compound microscope which can get to 800-1000x. I found that when using live mounts, living organisms many times it is best to view them from underneath.

All the parts I had were just laying around which made this a very inexpensive build. I am sure that it is easy to find a junked or used CD-Rom or DVD. The camera is just a cheap webcam again something you might be able to find from a friend or thrift shop. Mine was a dollar store purchase for $3. I find that this microscope does work better than my first version, especially with the focusing.

DIY Digital Microscope

Camera Placement

First Adaption

  
 
DIY Digital Microscope

Staying with microscopes, I have to build my own digital one. I want one with viewing from underneath.

Using a Dollar store $3 webcam, a piece of plywood, 3 4 inch bolts, 5 washers, 6 nuts, 4 wingnuts and 2 small pieces of 1/4 inch plastic. The only item I purchased was the webcam. Everything else I had laying around. This was just a quick work around I put together to see if it is worth while making.

I wanted to microscopically look at live samples from underneath. It actually works better than I thought it would. It looks to give about 4x the magnification, you are definitely not going to see bacteria. Though, I might be able to see other micro-organisms, I will further test this. As of yet this is not a final build, I will be making many improvements to this setup, especially with the magnification. I would like to at least get to 100x magnification. I just wanted to see if this would be worth while pursuing. And yes it is. And for a very low cost.

In this setup I have the camera is fixed and the sample is moving up and down.

Inspiration for this build came from here, they use a smartphone and laser pointer optics:
https://www.instructables.com/id/10-Smartphone-to-digital-microscope-conversion/

Here is another link using cardboard for the build:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHcX0vx4FZM

There also is the FlyPi that uses the Raspberry Pi system and camera:
https://open-labware.net/projects/flypi/

I will be looking further into the this version and the FlyPi.

Common Microscopy Stains

Stains found in common stores

I found a few different stains for microscopy at Walmart and a pet store.

At the pet store I found:
Methylene Blue - which is 2.3% and you should at least dilute to be at least 1%. I like to use it at 0.1%. It can also be used for DNA staining.

Malachite Green - is 0.038% therefore I use it as is.

At Walmart as well as many pharmacies I found:
Gentian Violet - is 1% I use as is. This is used as a replacement for crystal violet.

Iodine(tincture) - is 5%, I use it at 1%. Some iodines come as 2%.

India Ink - I use as is.

Another stain you might want is Eosin, many red inks use eosin for the dye, as well as some red food colouring. I am trying different inks, if I find a certain brand containing eosin or one I like I will post it. Trying and experimenting with different products you might find one you like as well.

As you can see there are many stains easily available to you without having to go to a specialty shop for them. Remember to always look at the ingredients of different products, you may find a chemical you need or want.

Web Cam On Old Microscope

Webcam Mounted on Microscope

Parts for Camera Mount

Camera Image

I have an old microscope and I find I can't look through it for long periods of time anymore so I decided to add a webcam to it. As you can see it is mounted on top of the ocular lens (Top Image) giving me the full magnification of the microscope.

It was a very simple build requiring very little to do or obtain (Middle Image). I was lucky that the camera was the same width as the lens. At first I was thinking of 3D printing the camera holder but I had a small plastic container I had picked up from the dollar store. Once the lid was removed and the bottom sawed off, both the camera and microscope lens fit right in. This allowed me to place the camera right on top of the lens.

I use Linux for my system so I am using the program cheese to view and record my samples (Bottom Image).