WTB stereo microscope

What's cheap? There's always several on eBay, and some tool catalogs, one in J&L industrial for $260(reduced from $468)no zoom. Zoom usually raises the cost. I've seen a few imports without zoom for around $100. Getting a cheap one without being able to look through it could be a problem.

They are hard to find for under about $400. Airgas has a no-name unit for $499 with universal stand. You'll still need a ringlight.

I bought a used AO at the local university's surplus store for $450 and was glad to pay it. I fabricated a new table for it and found a ringlight on ebay for about $40.

BTW, if you look at a used unit and focus doesn't track through the zoom range, there's a fairly easy adjustment to fix it. I found the proceedure on the web, but I can't remember the url.

I've sold a bunch of Bausch and Lomb Stereozoom units on eBay. They typically bring $300 to $500 if clean and working, more if there's an articulated mount. I was getting them at semiconductor processing bankruptcies for $25 to $100. Keeping the last one for myself. The industry seems to have moved on to more sophisticated (or perhaps just more stylish) units like the Mantis.

See:

Where are you located? I know someone in the Chicago area that used to have several stereo microscopes for sale. I don't know if he has any left or if he has any stereo zoom scopes. From what I saw of his inventory it might be a good idea to check them out in person. They looked decent to me at a glance but he buys at auction so one never knows what problems may await. Email me if you want contact info.

i bot a surplus head, no table, stand or lamp, for 10.00 at work. both ep's are good (30x?) and there are two (3?) objectives on a turret. can't find it right now but i remember it being B&Lomb.

one day i will make a table for it, s/b a nice addition to my shop. --Loren

Hmm ... inexpensive may be a problem. I depends on what you call "inexpensive". IIRC, mine cost me about $200.00 -- pre eBay. Somebody else wanted one, and found a surplus auction with about twenty or so, and asked for people to join in with him so he could make a bid which would be likely to win. I did, and he won, so I have mine. I don't even remember which newsgroup -- it was one which I did not regularly follow, but was very glad to have looked at that time.

The typical American Optical or B&L Stereo Zoom microscope head has a magnification from 0.7X to 3.0X, with 10X eyepieces, so that would make it 7X to 30X IIRC.

You may need to un-fix that budget, depending on how badly you want one. :-)

Good Luck, DoN.

There's a guy who shows up at the Dayton Hamvention every year with a table full of these microscopes. Prices range from about $150 to $450. I bought a B&L stereo microscope head from him a few years back for $150 (it had no stand, he wanted $300 for a stand). I made a stand.

Note that focusing on this particular microscope is done by moving the whole head up and down on the stand. I had some brass rack and a pair of pinions salvaged from something else which I used to fabricate a focusing rack for the stand.

I'd love to have one of the new sort which has a focusing macro objective lens (works like the lens on a 35mm camera) and a suspension arm to float the head over whatever you're working on. I played with one of those, and the tool lust was almost unbearable. But the price was just too much (a bit over $1200). So I make do with my homemade setup.

Gary