Luxeon ringlight for microscope

I finally finished my ringlight project. I can't take photos thru my scope with my camera, but I have put up a brief webpage with a couple of pix of the light.

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I've not used a fiberoptic ringlight, but I think this light is markedly superior to a fluorescent ringlight as Aristo. It exceeds my wildest expectations. I'm delighted with it.

It uses four 1-watt Luxeon LED's with 30-degree collimators, held in a ring around the microscope objective. The diameter of the ring is about 4", but it isn't really a ring, just four lights that are each about 2" displaced from the objective axis.

Each of the lights is aimable so their beams will converge at the workplane about 6-1/2" below. They are also each individually dimmable at the control box, using thumbwheel pots. There is no color shift when dimming. Maximum brightness is almost too bright to be comfortable even at max zoom. The light in the field of view is bright, white and very uniform.

Tools in the work region (tweezers, soldering iron, solder etc) cast only faint shadows, just enough to give 3D cues. Nothing anywhere runs even warm, much less hot.

Ths is not a particularly complex project, but it's considerably more than a one weekend project. For me, it was absolutely worth it. I am going to enjoy using this tool a lot.

Reply to
Don Foreman
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Cool! Meiji 'scopes ROCK!

Reply to
skuke

I imagine you used white luxeons......I was looking for some LEDs and stumbled on Luxeons on a webiste but they seem to be pretty pricey at $12.00 for each 1 watt assembly.......but I guess thier price over standard type LEDS is better due to their intensity......I need some in the 460 to 470nm range for lunar lights.

NIce job by the way......on that ringlight.

Regards'

Reply to
Roy

If you want more than one or two, buy from Future Electronics. They are the sole distributor for Luxeon. Other suppliers buy theirs from them too.

Future has a min order of $25 and they charge $9 shipping on any order, but a blue 1-watt Luxeon Star LXHL-MB1D centered at 470 nM is about $3.01, I think. You could get 10 of 'em for about $40.

Future's website is hopeless. Order by phone.

1-888-880-3449 x 4292
Reply to
Don Foreman

Just a thought for a future modification... use a joystick for differential control with a rotary knob, preferably on the joystick, for overall brightness.

Mark Rand (I'm only jealous really :-) RTFM

Reply to
Mark Rand

Nice work Don. I have B&L microscope and take pictures regularly right thru the eyepiece. When properly focused, the microscope projects image at infinity. I just place the camera objective lens against the eyepiece and shoot. Make sure that yo have some kind of rubber guard as not to scratch the lens.

Reply to
Boris Mohar

Yup! I thought of that about a month ago, but I'd already redesigned the thing twice and was determined to finish a project for once!

I can always make another control box. The light ring connects to the box with a mini-DIN connector so it'd be easy to swap controllers.

BTW, I don't have a way to measure luminous intensity, but according to the specsheets for Luxeon and Fraen collimators (with a range correction from 1 meter to 6.5 inches) the luminous intensity on the work surface is about 30,000 lux at WOT. That's about 3X direct tropical sunlight. With no noticable heat. The lights run cooler than a fluorescent tube, and only about 1.5 watts are dissipated in the control box at WOT so it doesn't get warm either.

Reply to
Don Foreman

What kind of camera? That doesn't work at all with my Olympus, and even with the little Kodak I get pretty marked vignetting. Maybe your B&L has a larger exit pupil than my scope. Do you have 10X or

5X eyepieces?
Reply to
Don Foreman

I sure wished I knew a lot more about leds and luxeons and collimators etc etc.....Its where lighting for reef and marine tanks is headed, due to heat issues and prices involved with power compacts, HO, and VHO lights and the high end jetal halides......and bulbs for all of the above are outragesouly expensive when you consider they get changed every 9 months or so. Right now the rage is led moon lights (blue 460 nm to simulate the light a reef has on with moon lighting, and some have played with reds and yellows to simulate sundown and sunrise, but the main issues is full daylight lighting without the associated heat the typical lights give off......I bet that ringlight yu have if its equal to 3x direct tropical sunlight would do super in a small pico reef tank and would be awesome..Have you thought about marketing it for such. Most pico tanks are 2 gal or less in size and rarely over 8" deep....Would be awesome to say the least. Sure would beat hanging a 75 or 50 watt 15K MH light over it just to grow stonie corals and keep clams.........So you should check into it, there is definately a market for it, or for one in kit form........and odds are it beats the hell out of soldering up an array of 340 leds just to fit and provide light on a 2 gal tank..

Regards

Roy

Reply to
Roy

Oops. Should have been 0.3 x direct tropical sunlight, which is about

100,000 lux. Got my footcandles and lux mixed up.
Reply to
Don Foreman

Don, did you actually fabricate the holder/reflector/lenses? Are you going to write up a step-by-step of how to make this unit?

Thanks, Grant

D> >

Reply to
Grant Erwin

Bear in mind that the 30,000 lux intensity (0.3x sunlight, not 3x as I first wrote) is at a distance of 6.5 inches and would diminish as the square of distance from the lamps. But these are just 1-watt Luxeons; they're also available in 3-watt for only a buck or so more each.

Your 2 gallon tank 8" deep has area of about 58 sq inches, or about 8 times that of my 3" dia illuminated region. 20 three-watt luxeons would be 60 watts, probably would compare reasonably well with a 50 watt MH light.

LED's are not yet quite as efficient as fluorescent or metal halide lamps. One reason the ringlight significantly outperforms a fluorescent ringlight is that the fluorescent spills light all over the bench while the collimators direct nearly 100% of the LED outputs to a region about 3" in diameter.

Luxeons are only 3 or 4 bux each if you buy several at a time, and their lifetime is rated at 50,000 hours. And, if you got three colors, you could synthesize colors and simulate dawn, day, dusk and night conditions. And they're very easy to dim with inexpensive electronics.

If you would like to try this, I would be glad to collaborate with you off-net. I'm retired and have plenty of time for stuff like that. It's what I do.

Reply to
Don Foreman

Which Olympus? I get pretty good results with an Olympus D-460, despite the fact that the manual controls are very limited. The smaller outer wire wrap in this photo is 4.8 mils:

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I made an adapter that's a slip fit on the OD of the camera lens on one end and slides on the eyepiece on the other end. B&L 10x WF eyepieces.

I've been dreaming about a ringlight that fits around the quill of a Bridgeport.

Ned Simmons

Reply to
Ned Simmons

Really? A 1W LED is going to get warm if ran at full power... don't the Luxeons have integral heatsinks? :)

Reply to
Mark Jones

Oooh, nice idea. You might be able to get a deal on LEDs on eBay. Once I bought a 100-count bag of nice ultraviolet ones for $10! Not that those would do any good for milling however. :)

Reply to
Mark Jones

Wow! Good results indeed! My Oly is a C2500 SLR, has a pretty big lens on it.

Reply to
Don Foreman

I bought the molded plastic collimators. They're only 3 or 4 bux each. They're Fraen FLP-HMB3-LL01-0, available from several suppliers. I made everything else.

I don't think I'll write a step-by-step because there are many ways this could be done, most probably a lot simpler than the way I did it. Also, what fits a Meiji EMZ scope probably wouldn't fit other scopes. The only drawings I made had just enough information so I could remember dimensions long enough to make the various parts. Some were just back-of-envelope sketches. I do have more photos, though.

For example, I thought the little spheres would be cool and look neat, and they were fun to make, but the lights could probably be hard-mounted to aluminum tabs, just bend the tabs to aim the lights. Ya should only have to aim them once and aiming is not at all critical. I made the spheres with a boring head and tilted rotary table (actually an indexing head) in the mill.

The spheres are held in place with little molded plastic (poured urethane) clamps that I made a pattern and mold for. A couple of pieces of wire and a couple of screws probably would have worked as well but I wanted to play with the plastic molding material and technique. I didn't get that right the first time, but I learned a lot and got it right the second time. And so on. Now I know how to do that for future projects. That's pretty neat stuff!

The constant-current drive and control elex are of very straightforward design. I would be glad to share the schematic if anyone is interested.

Reply to
Don Foreman

The Luxeon Stars do, but they're not quite enough to run barefoot. I used bare Luxeon emitters epoxied to aluminum slugs about 0.690" dia that fit in holes in the spheres. I smeared a wee dab of Arctic heatsink grease on the slugs before putting them in the holes. That design centers the emitter on the collimator so each sphere is both a light mount and a collimator mount. Just shove the slug in the back until it mates up with the collimator. The spheres seems to be ample heatsinks. They probably transfer some heat to the mounting ring as well. They feel barely warm in operation, probably about 20F above ambient.

If the stars were mounted on sheetmetal tabs that are part of the mounting ring, that could work well also. Bend tab to aim light. One might then use the molded plastic collimator mounts that Fraen offers. I thought that would look clunky, but it'd work.

Reply to
Don Foreman

It is a Fuji 3800 digital. The 10X objective is 18mm diameter.

Regards,

Boris Mohar

Got Knock? - see: Viatrack Printed Circuit Designs (among other things)

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void _-void-_ in the obvious place

Reply to
Boris Mohar

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