DIY Scanning Laser Microscope

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I built a 3D printed, scanning laser confocal microscope so I could collect 3D surface topology and profilometry data! The microscope stage is based on an OpenFlexure "Delta" stage, and the confocal optics are constructed with a 3D printed body, some lenses, a 405nm laser, pinhole and photodiode. The microscope is controlled by a Raspberry Pi (which controls an arduino to move the steppers).
It's not beautiful, it takes forever to scan, and the images are of dubious quality... but it works!
OpenFlexure: openflexure.org/
0:00 Intro
1:56 Confocal vs Widefield Microscopy
3:25 OpenFlexure Motion Platform
4:01 Confocal optical breakdown
8:00 Delta motion stage
8:43 Photodiode amplifier
9:14 Confocal Pinhole demonstration
10:31 Camera vs Photodiode
11:31 Data processing considerations
14:05 Images and results!
18:22 Optimizations
21:37 Discord! Come hang out with us!

[@nobirdsnomasters]

I have absolutely zero need for a "confocal laser microscope" but your channel is so incredibly well done I can't help but watch.

[@MikkoRantalainen]

I'd love to have confocal laser microscope but I need it so little that I cannot justify even the cost of DIY project to get one. Just like I would want to have accurate spectrophotometer, too.

[@josejimenez896]

I've never heard of one but now I need one

[@blitzar8443]

It's one of those impulse buys frfr

[@StuffMadeHere]

Dude your videos look soooo good. Also, sweet microscope :)

[@Airjew666]

*Videos shot with a confocal laser microscope*

[@BreakingTaps]

❤ Thanks! Don't tell anyone but I only release videos because I like color grading footage and pretending I'm Michael Bay. All the science junk is an elaborate cover story 😇

[@herrgerd1684]

@@BreakingTaps where's the explosions then? bay movies are 50% explosions minimum!

[@BreakingTaps]

@Herr Gerd Soon™ hahaha

[@Jcewazhere]

Since you're here, and your most recent video is weeks old and has tens of thousands of comments :P @Stuff Made Here: Idea for you: A holster for cops that when the firearm is drawn it automatically calls for backup and EMS. Beau of the Fifth Column did a 9 minute video showing some of the benefits of it. Either try to make one yourself, or help put out the message that this would be good for cops and the people they point firearms at.

[@timthompson468]

Very cool. In the 1990s I worked with a startup developing a commercial confocal laser review station in the semiconductor industry. We scanned the laser in x-y and had a piezo stage for the z-axis. It also required a proprietary frame grabber board that was synced to the laser scanner and z-stage. My work was on the microcontrollers, so I only knew the general optics design. We experienced what we called the pit-particle issue where what we knew to be a solid above the surface (a sub micron calibrated latex sphere) could sometimes show up in the 3D image as a hole.That seems similar to what you were sing on the one image. Our optics engineering team spent a lot of time resolving that, but I don’t recall how they attacked it. Great video. Thanks.

[@diegofloor]

That seems like a problem that could be "solved" (mitigated maybe) by analyzing the curve. If the peak is out of reach there should be a steady climb before, which should be detectable with a proper numerical analysis. Then I would replace this value with a max value. It would at least make it obvious in the image where the 'z cropping' happens, instead of random valleys.

[@AdityaMehendale]

If I may suggest - please consider putting the transimpedance amplifier _very_ close to the photodiode, preferably mount the diode directly piggybacked on the opamp IC (directly soldered, no sockets) onto the DIP8 of the opamp. The capacitance of the long coax between the PD and the TIA limits the bandwidth, in your current setup.

[@victortitov1740]

Yep. And also using a smaller diode will give better speed (thx lower capacitance) and lower noise.

[@BreakingTaps]

Cheers for the tips! This project really taught me that my EE skills are terrible and I need to spend some time learning the fundamentals. Just barely got the amp working and it really is awful in every way :) Will keep that in mind for the next one, I forsee myself needing a decent photodiode amplifier in the future :)

[@reps]

What's this, I see laser but nothing getting burnt, evaporated or even slightly charred? 🤨 JK that's really cool and I am looking forward to that thing back there in the summer!

[@Koodie2]

Nice to see you here. Guten Tag!

[@zachbrown7272]

okay, break time's over. Go work on OSMU some more.

[@BreakingTaps]

Just _really tiny_ charring on the sample 😉

[@GermanMythbuster]

So fun to always see my most loved youtubers on the same channels I subscribed to 😄😄😄 Well we all like Science 😄

[@Sqwince23]

why are you browsing KZbin videos? Don't you have a CNC mill to be recording for us?

[@Alexander_Sannikov]

I think one of the reasons why you're getting artifacts is because of how metals reflect light : it's mostly specular reflection(it's directional, in your case parasitic) and not diffusive (unidirectional, what you're detecting). metal oxides, however, tend to build up in tiny crevices of metal surfaces and they are dielectrics, so they create tiny diffusive areas in otherwise specular metal which might look like noisy height changes.

[@timjackson3954]

This is a bugaboo when working on PCB's under a microscope generally. They are SHINY, and what you see is not a nice illuminated surface but a reflection of the light source. That's why we use ring lights to work on PCBs, at least that eliminates reflections from the surface plane, although not from solder fillets.

[@Daniel-zw6gz]

I think you are right about reflections. And to add something else. I think some reflections are courses by lights other than the laser. Like the image with the "EC". The left, white part of the image could have a lot of room light. Then the lights were turned of for a little while. And then a small light in the room is turned on what causes the reflections on top of the characters. But I could be wrong because the scans took multiple days and then I would expect to see more day night effects.

[@starrfiddler]

@@Daniel-zw6gz What type of temperature fluctuation is seen in this workspace over 24 hours? The PCB has many components, each with a different CTE. Also conformal coatings can confuse the sense of sharp focus.

[@starrfiddler]

Egads! Sorry, this is not where I should have put the question!

[@clawsoon]

I was thinking about reflectivity, too, after a recent experience trying to use photographs to create 3D models using Meshroom. Reflections make it basically impossible for the algorithms to figure out what's going on in the images. Anything reflective has to be dusted with a matte powder to get it to work.

[@SarahKchannel]

You could try to have the beamsplitter at the Brewster angle of you laser source and mirror material, could avoid the laser dump, when the optical path is geometrically redesigned.

[@BreakingTaps]

Woah! That's new to me, just did some reading. Very cool! I had no idea polarized light had that property.

[@GeorgeTsiros]

@@BreakingTaps brewster's angle is the kind of thing when you see it happen, the coffee goes out your nose even if you're not drinking coffee

[@markp5726]

@@GeorgeTsiros This comment caused coffee to come out my nose. And judging by my neighbor's shouts, I know from where the coffee was teleported.

[@chunxia4094]

@@BreakingTaps There are two more reasons for the poor SNR: (1) the laser beam is highly aberrated due to poor alignment quality, and (2) some reflected light will be fed into the laser cavity, which actually affects the output beam intensity. The reflected beam is definitely something you want to avoid.

[@michaelhaardt5988]

If the laser is polarized, it might be an option to filter the returning light in that direction to exclude specular reflection from those shiny surfaces. That reduces the return signal very much, but scans for scattering and the surface geometry matters much less, which may otherwise deflect a focused beam in a different direction. It has the same effect as coating the surface matte.

[@StanIvanov]

If you're still working on this, consider replacing your photodiode and aperture with a linear CCD array. You can use the reflected beam width as feedback for the next Z position to find the focal height in 2-3 iterations instead of scanning.

[@ElectricalInsanity]

After watching this video, I thought this was going to be one of those huge million plus channels that I just hadn't heard of yet. That you only have 25k subs is outrageous to me. Everything here is on par with the best of the best KZbin has to offer.

[@CNCKitchen]

I need (want) one! Awesome work, man!

[@kentvandervelden]

This is really well done! I watched an OpenFlexure video and this was suggested. Really shows that a lot of time went into the project and into the presentation. Wishing you the best of success.

[@BreakingTaps]

Thanks Kent! Good to see you, hope things are well!

[@AnonymousBrain65]

I think the biggest issue is the range of reflectivity. I had this issue with 3d scanning using photogrammetry. Your photos will be greatly affected anywhere there is solder on that PCB, or other curved highly reflective areas. It might be worth trying to air brush a flat color on everything to make the reflective properties uniform, which should normalize your readings and greatly increase the resolution and accuracy of your photos. If air brushing adds too much material to the sample, there might be some gaseous coating options like 2D boron nitride that would only add 1 atom to the height. Good work though. Your channel will do great :)

[@TheCensoreduser]

Very cool, i worked on a similar project a few years back using DVD optical pickup heads and its internal optical path, which is indeed a confocal arrangement with an electromagnetic vertical adjustment which provides a high degree of precision.. my failure was in the X-Y stage.. might have to revisit with openflexure but it was something that worked as an arduino shield.

[@chrisreichelt7202]

Dude your video quality and experimental setups keep on getting better! Awesome stuff, keep it up!

[@BreakingTaps]

Thanks! Really appreciate it :)

[@Totalis1989]

This is amazing! It's fantastic that you can achieve this level of detail using 3d printed components. The explanation was very useful and covers a topic which isn't well covered elsewhere. Thank you.

[@trollenz]

That project deserves a subscription right out of the box ! Thanks for producing such an interesting content.

[@HuygensOptics]

Really cool project! Another way to do this is by using a standard cd or dvd laser head. You cannot scan very large areas, but with very high resolution.

[@BreakingTaps]

Thanks, and cheers for stopping by! Will take a closer look at those DVD units, are there open source designs/plans/software to control them? I'm not sure I have the skills to hack one myself :)

[@edengleback872]

@@BreakingTaps I think that styropyro has some tutorials on youtube, and they mostly revolve around an lm317 regulator. Also I had an idea for the optimisation which might be interesting: set a grid over the area you're scanning, and go to each point sequentially and move the z axis to find the height of the point. After the first scan look for areas where there is a large change in height and then go back to get more resolution in those areas. This should result in being able to start with a coarser grid which should make the scan a bit faster, although fine detail may be lost in some areas. This was really cool and I don't need a confocal microscope but now I'd really like to try at some point

[@vincentguttmann2231]

@@BreakingTaps They are actually not that difficult to control. But, one potential problem is that you need a special 2x2 photodiode to focus properly. Let me try to explain: imagine a 2x2 grid of photodiodes, with them being oriented at 45 degrees. The optics in there are special so that if you are too far away, the beam becomes elliptical from top to bottom, so the top and bottom photodiodes get more light than the left and right one, but if you're too too far away, the left and right ones get more light than the top and bottom ones. And if you're perfectly in focus, the laser for forms a perfect circle and all photodiodes get the same amount of light. I know Hamamatsu offers photodiodes that can be used for that, but they'd probably cost you a kidney, and the chip that's currently in there doesn't expose the focus data to you. If you want pictures for what I'm talking about, wikipedia has images in the article about the CD player. But driving the coils themselves is relatively easy, their movement is proportional to the voltage across them. Actually, a laser unit should be a pretty good confocal stage if I'm not completely mistaken, since you have the exact same thing happening that's happening here, and it's all one unit.

[@hullinstruments]

@@BreakingTaps dude there are absolutely tons of wonderfully documented open source projects utilizing the high end opto-mechanics in a standard DVD/Blu-ray optical pickup. a bit of googling, there are a few things on hackaday and elsewhere. Really incredible documented projects out there. One of my favorites will show up in Google image results… You will see a nice looking finished product with all of the circuitboards in a purple color. They got some really good results with that, and I think A set a fresh eyes like yours could really push the project further. Billions of dollars of R&D have gone into developing the optical pickups in some of the higher end units. They absolutely engineered those things to within an inch of their life 😂 I’ve got dozens of them, so if you need some parts just let me know and I’ll ship you a box no charge. Also have a bunch of really high-end hamamatsu optical sensors and components from a bunch of equipment I’ve repaired or salvaged. So I may just have something you need. I’ll gladly chip in and help however I can

[@mikeselectricstuff]

For small movements like, that, maybe a voice-coil based actuator would probably be better - could you maybe adapt a CD/DVD optical block?

[@cnxunuo]

Piezo will also be nice, voice coil need some clever close loop thing which piezo you can almost get away with complete open loop

[@BreakingTaps]

Agreed! Would be a _ton_ faster and probably more precise too. Lesson learned I suppose :) There's a followup technique (chromatic confocal) which I might explore, and will definitely explore alternative motion options. The OpenFlexure stage was super convenient but I didn't realize the movement speed itself would end up being the limiting factor.

[@DmitryKiktenko]

maybe heads drive from hdd drive could be better?

[@DmitryKiktenko]

really awesome project! i think you should use kinda white matte spray paint to get rid of scanning artifacts. i've build ultrasonic "scanner" to make an image using standard arduino us-sensor and had a lot of time to figure out what do i see on my result images )

[@excitedbox5705]

That is what I am using and you can scan thousands of points per second. I only have dvd lasers on hand but you get better resolution with a BluRay laser. You also get the entire optical unit and sensor as 1 piece and only need to build the stage. There is also a chip inside the drive that contains 7 op amps / comparators to control the voice coils and time the readings.

[@firedrive45]

Hey, I make confocal, whitelight interferometers and microscopes for a living. Here is a few insights to improve your results. 1) Your setup is non-rigid, which means there will be vibrational motion and modes oscillation between sample and microscope. Fix this by adding a heavy base and using steel instead of aluminum. 2) Laser Diodes suffer from Speckle noise, which is up to 15% of intensity. Switch instead to a LED based emitter. 3) Dont leave cables hanging, air drafts might push and move source or detector. Make sure they are fixed. 4) Using thick half mirrors is not recommended, as they create ghosting. That happens when double reflections overlap with slight change in angle. Cheap option is film beam splitter or cube beam splitter. 5)In Confocal, we dont move the stage to scan. Instead, we use DLP (mirror arrays) or liquid crystal to raster the image, pixel by pixel at a fixed height, then move along Z, until we find the peak for all points. Otherwise, its a cool prototype V1. good job.

[@BreakingTaps]

Awesome, thanks for the tips! Really appreciate it! And doh, didn't even think about the detector moving but that seems very obvious in retrospect. Interesting about DLP, I assumed commercial systems used a galvo system to raster the laser around. Very cool, thanks for sharing!

[@professord8888]

2 minutes in, this is what it's all about on so many levels. So impressed already!

[@timk.1395]

I love the way you explain! Thank you for shining the light of knowledge all over like that.

[@lewsdiod]

You've come such a long way in your video production. Hilarious intro and great quality, plus intriguing topics!

[@ElenarMT]

YOU GIVE ME HOPE. I'm in awe of this video. My intellect is only barely sufficient to grasp what the components do. It's true that I feel bitter in myself for not being smart enough to do something like this. But I am profoundly happy that you are. It gives me hope for humanity's future that there are people as brilliant as you in the world. It really does. I wish you all the very best

[@derchesten]

Jesus christ! this is a 2Msub channel level production quality! how you manage! I mean, i loved all your videos but you really outdid yourself with this one!

[@smellsofbikes]

I love the presentation and the work! It was fun to see bits of it in development, and it came out beautifully.

[@dexiedude]

Phenomenal video and experiment/build quality. Your presentations have the perfect amount of technical info, and I love hearing about the mistakes/troubleshooting. I hope to see your channel grow and can't wait for your next video.

[@helmutzollner5496]

Wow! Really interesting project. Hope to see more of this soon. Thank you for sharing!

[@juzadee]

Hey, awesome video! I see there already was some comments about reflective surfaces here - and that is indeed the probable cause for the inverted shield structure. When the beam hits the slightly higher point of the shields edge it is scattered into the room and not back into the lense making the signal weaker. This would explain the smaller values in some of the curves peaks too. Alexander Sannikov mentioned in their comment that the metal oxides being diffuseve cause noise in the signal. Indeed if the samples were to be prepared beforehand (like they do for electron microscopes) to be compleately matt with a coating of a white matt substance the laser would behave more uniformly along the entire surface.

[@mynyasabut]

Man! your videos are awesome. We get months worth of education in science and technology in every one of them. Your detailed way of explaining is incredible. Thanks

[@Shandrunn]

Very cool! My knowledge of optical scanning goes no further than end user where I push button and machine goes brrt, so it's great to see the community come together with advice. I'm very excited to see an upgraded model!

[@LeoMakes]

Super interesting project! It blends my love of making and metrology. Looking forward to seeing more videos!

[@martylawson1638]

Did a fair amount of optics work in university and self-taught myself analog electronics using photo-diode amplifiers. One of my best had a 60fW noise floor, saturated at 20nW, 10Gohm trans-impedance gain, and about 30Hz bandwidth. Very slowly working on a V2, but happy to share V1 in the mean time.

[@KallePihlajasaari]

Please do, a pic of a hand drawn schematic will already give people a direction to follow. Make a blog or KZbin post and eventually Google will find it.

[@johnandersen8999]

This channel just keeps getting better!

[@patsauber4843]

Super ambitious project, wow! Very impressed you got any images. Would definitely want better / faster scanning system but it does work so that's amazing.

[@BloodAsp]

There should be a tech/science youtuber collab, you'd fit in nicely!

[@markp5726]

Sounds like something Hank Green (SciShow, Crash Course, Journey to the Microcosmos, etc etc etc) could be interested in... but no idea how to get his attention.

[@makarlock]

Absolutely love the jank to performance ratio of this project!

[@minikretz1]

Amazing explanation, I understood the whole process and know why each piece is so important. Great work

[@JamesBailey123]

Great video, 20 minutes fly by, just the right level of detail. From my experience stacking microscope shots and focus failures, it will be that 'specular highlights' (very shiny surfaces) break your algorithm. You'll be assuming that the thing you are scanning has unchanging topology (which is true), but accidentally assuming that when you move the microscope stage that the pattern of light reflected would not change (untrue), because unless the surface is perfectly matte, the 'brightness' does not 1:1 correlate with 'in focus', it also correlates with 'shiny thing pointing at lucky angle to send light back to sender'. Imagine you were scanning a microscopic disco ball, if you strapped a torch to just above a camera lens and moved it closer and further, you'd see that different panels would suddenly become very bright, and others very dark. It confuses normal cameras with their contrast based focus detection (and even sometimes phase detection). If you want to test what I'm talking about, scan some glitter or a retroreflective tape. I would spray the item to be scanned with a misting of 'airplane glue' smelling hairspray in the giant cans from 50cm away. It will 'matte' your surfaces sufficiently. If it kills the retroreflection of tape, it will be scannable by your algorithm.

[@jacobyoung6876]

This is really impressive! It's great to see people really pushing the limits of DIY science.

[@kVital_2023]

Cool project. Try to modulate ur laser beam with chopper or so and demodulate ur photodiode signal at the same frequency. This will remove much of noise.

[@mr_gerber]

Good point! I was about to suggest some physical wavelength filtering as well, just to remove signals from ambient light, but some decent modulation will remove a lot of the ambient (DC in any case)

[@Gwallacec2]

This man is absolutely incredible. I wish I was able to retain and use learned information as well as he does. He just is a wealth of knowledge.

[@AsmageddonPrince]

You retain information by using it. Memorization is a myth and not real learning.

[@thats_my_comment]

I find it absolutely amazing that you built this yourself WOW!! Thanks for sharing

[@OnnieKoski]

this reminds me of how old drum scanners worked, but i cant help but feel there is a better way of measuring depth (and over a much larger area simultaneously) while using a camera sensor and detecting image sharpness.

[@graealex]

It's just a matter of time until this channel explodes. Keep on!

[@budgetcoinhunter]

I wouldn't mind seeing you improving upon this. I was able to find a height map of the obverse of a Lincoln cent elsewhere online, and that was an amazing help in creating a model of the bust. If there were some way to get scans of any coin like that, it'd be absolutely amazing.

[@lingdantiancai]

Fantastic work with most simple tools. Nice job

[@ThingEngineer]

Love the project, great video, glad it showed up in my feed somehow!

[@AlphaPhoenixChannel]

Awesome stuff! I'm amazed that the data collection was actually limiting - I probably would have gone with a different xyz stage and scanned voxels one by one and been way too slow. the continuous scan seemed to be enabled by the latency of the stage so that's pretty awesome! I'm also glad you called out the big cylinder of conflat flanges in the background cause I was getting really curious...

[@BreakingTaps]

Thanks! Hehehe, I'm pretty excited to start working on the chamber, think I have all the necessary components... just need to wait for my garage to warm up a bit (we just got more snow! argh!) and machine a few different adapters. Soon!

[@JGHFunRun]

I'm only slightly surprised to see you here

[@larrykent196]

Thank you for the video and sharing your journey. Inquisitive as I am about so much, the lessons you share of in these challenges including the good the bad and the ugly enlighten and inspire. Your success is a journey filled with experiences won and lost, always best shared. Thanks again well done.

[@husamettinglocs]

awesome intro. loved it. thx for all the work. immediately subscribed.

[@whytelove]

funny video ! It reminded me one of my internship : I had to build an interferometer to mesure optical elements with 10 nm accuracy for the Z dimension. But instead of laser I used a white light source. Thanks for the video, it brought back some great memories :)

[@haenselundgretel654]

Wow! That is really amazing! Thanks a lot for sharing! Keep on going!

[@1xBublex1]

coming from the field of microcopy im impressed at what you were able to make on the basis of these rather simple devices! keep going!

[@1xBublex1]

did you actualy try imaging a clean, flat surface? It seems arbitrary but you might get information about your noise (and if you try different materials, there might even be different noise values due to different reflectances of these materials).

[@BreakingTaps]

Yunno, I didnt... but that's a great idea. Could probably use that to help calibrate/clean up the images too.

[@tomz808]

Fascinating. Great job and good explanation of the optical path. I wonder if it would be faster to run the scan like an atomic force microscope, riding the surface by tracking the amplitude of the photodiode. Move a step in x, then move the z up or down to maximize the amplitude, repeat. Advance y each time you hit the end of x. The assumption is the surface is often flat, or at least has a gentle slope, so instead of scanning the whole z stack for an x,y point, just search around the last height (z) each time you move to a neighboring point.

[@clonkex]

I would think you could then attempt to recognise the trend from previous points in the direction you're currently moving and predict which way you need to scan in z.

[@ikocheratcr]

Nice project. Very good details on what this microscope is and how it works, very good. About the optimization "issue" you commented, I see it as a simple thing to run an arduino (or any other microcontroller) driving the steppers directly and sampling the data. I am not sure how much ADC resolution is required to get nice data, but many uC have 10~12bit ADCs and sample at > 20kS/s, which is way over the stepper frequency. A simple loop will take stepper to "home" and do step; take sample; print sample; next. repeat. You do not need to "verify" the position, just let the actuator (stepper) do it job. There is for sure a time need for the the actuator to stop moving (settle position), but that can be measured by looking at the samples, and dynamically determine how long to wait for. Also running the scan at constant speed, will help to vibration and "inertia problems", ie accelerations. I am not familiar at all with the OpenFlexure device, so maybe I do not see how it would not work like I described.

[@rainman6272]

I'm floored. That was awesome. I finally have a project to pursue that will force me to crack the seals of signal processing, python, and optics. Thanks so much!

[@BreakingTaps]

Goodluck! Happy to answer questions if you have any!

[@clintongryke6887]

Really interesting; for pinhole making, you might try an acupuncture needle - sharp and round - works well, and of course various gauges are available.

[@Doodlebud]

Love the project! Miss doing this stuff. Man if it takes a week to image a surface you wonder how much temperature change over that time frame would impact the sample. Its a small area you're sampling but the whole object would chmage temp. For efficiency buildings can drop temp overnight. You're measuring such small features I wonder if it might be enough to cause some of those anomalies in the data plots. It's always a challenge coming up with the right algorithms to filter the way you want but not kill good data or pick the wrong point.

[@encryptedmaze]

Your channel is *insanely* underrated. This is sooo cool.

[@andrewphillip8432]

Awesome work! Some vibration isolation might help with noise reduction. Air table would be nice but I’ve seen open source AFM and scanning tunneling scopes using a heavy platform sitting on balloons to decouple ambient room vibrations. Good luck! And thanks for sharing this with the world!

[@bringer-of-change]

I definitely want something like this for measuring tiny inductors and resonant circuitry

[@SinanAkkoyun]

Omg you are so smart, and I am so in love with this project!

[@Coreterra]

I cant even tell you how cool this is! Thanks for sharing!

[@joelkirk9]

This is really interesting stuff. I just finished my masters on the rotationally coupled imaging of spin coating using a similar optical technology for real-time surface topology observation of the process. If I were to continue I'd definitely integrate some of your mechanics!

[@hci840]

I had a similar issue with scan time on an IR camera I built, based on a single-point IR detector and a couple of silicon mirrors, also driven by stepper motors. In the end, I got it to a) scan the scene at very low resolution and then b) automatically pick points of interest (essentially, hot bits) and go back and scan around them at higher res.

[@RogerTerrill]

Absolutely love it!!! (topography btw!)

[@z4zuse]

Reminds me of Ben Greer’s Single Pixel Camera that used Radon transformations to process the single pixel data.

[@marcopolo1613]

The curved surface at the top of the shield is probably scattering light like a convex mirror. If you had a matte textured object you might get better results.

[@jeffpkamp]

Nice. Seems like it didn't like highly reflective surfaces like the screw and pcb with solder. Great project. The open flexure had come a long way since I first checked it out.

[@tanguyvanregemorter2556]

Wouaw, many thanks the video! This is an amazing work!

[@jaimeortega4940]

Always enjoy your content!🎬

[@TsunauticusIV]

Holy cow. Hidden gem of a channel. Proud to say I was here before he hits 10 million subs!

[@4ntig3n]

This looks like an amazing project. Inspiring :)

[@FalconFour]

I was reeeeaaaally hoping/expecting to see it in operation. Literally laughed out loud when I saw that op-amp circuit. I have no idea how it works (I'm a digital/battery/power guy... poor excuse), but just how you were like "lol I pooped this out" was amazing. Still, you got a sub out of me. Good stuff!

[@brucewilliams6292]

You do some awesome projects! This was very cool!

[@DynmcStudio]

This is legendary! Great job! Now I want to make one.

[@wojciechmika5860]

Super cool video! I actually deal with laser scanning confocal micros on a daily basis and its super impressive that you were ale to make one on your own, wow :D probably the next, more advanced step for speeding up the scans would be to use piezoelectric mirrors to deviate the laser beam instead of moving the sample. Also motorized lens in Z axis would be awesome to see :)

[@dogol284]

You are living my dream, my friend. I’ve always had this fantasy living in my head of making my own custom microchips.

[@AA-gl1dr]

I love every single piece of this. Instant sub

[@brizaca]

thank you for sharing this impressive work

[@MrShkolololo]

Wow! It's amazing. I think such cheap (compared to real research machines) proof-of-idea devices can be placed in schools and museums to inspire to light up children hearts and inspire them to follow scientific method and become researcher themselves. That you for you channel!

[@jumilifyify]

This is brilliant. Thanks!

[@movercast]

This was a great video. I've found having a fiberoptic cable act as the pin hole to be a good solution. Also adding 2 scanning mirror to traverse the XY plane reduces the need to rely on mechanical movement. A photo-multiplier-tube is a great way to increase the electrons per photon ratio. Also using a quarter wave plate and a polarization beam splitter lets you keep more of the precious photons going to the source.

[@BreakingTaps]

Interesting, I had thought about using a fiber but wasn't sure if that was correct or not. Does it have to be a single mode fiber, or would larger multi-mode fibers work too? I guess larger would be fine, since I'm already using a multi-mode laser and I should care one way or another anyway. Might give that a shot! Good idea about quarter wave and polarizing beam splitter! Looks like I need to grab a few more optical components to have on hand for the next project :) my box of optics is slowly growing haha

[@movercast]

@@BreakingTaps - MMF is more forgiving because it's 50µm vs SMF being 10µm. Either is a PITA for alignment / focusing. I think going w/ some wave plates and polarizing beam splitter would be more useful to keep those precious photons going to the meter. Good luck!

[@bretcannon3826]

The quarter wave plate and polarizing beamsplitter also reduces optical feedback into the laser diode. Optical feedback into a laser diode can cause a lot of noise. Using single mode fiber gives a smaller effective pinhole and a diverging beam that can then be well collimated with a single achromatic lens, which would remove the need for the input lens in your beam expander. I have just butt coupled a telecom patch cable, with a 9 micron diameter core, to a high power LED and imaged the output onto a cheap security camera and have to turn down the current to the LED to not saturate the pixels on the camera. If you need more power into the fiber, you can buy a "visual fault locator Fiber optic cable tester" which couples mW of light into the core of a single mode optical fiber with no alignment. These are available on Amazon for under $20. You could also use a fiber-optic circulator or a 3dB fiber optic coupler to replace the beamsplitter, which would remove all need to align pinholes to precise locations.

[@KallePihlajasaari]

@@bretcannon3826 That Y coupler is a brilliant idea. The optics would be one focus lens to bring the fibre end to a parallel beam for the microscope optic. a fibre coupled laser and detector would complete the capture system.

[@cooldog1972]

i dont know how you dont have more views and subscribers, this is an awesome project!

[@edgeeffect]

I love the intro on this.... I always like my science and einginiering tinged with a little bit of comedy. I'd love to see more of that trans impedance amp. .... electronic "monstrosities" are beautiful.

[@jeremypatrickdahan]

Great project ! For the data visualisation, you could try to display depth using color and intensity using opacity. This way you visually should attenuate the issue of incorrect local maxima. Use a color scale that has a constant luminosity like one of the cubehelix color scales

[@DCsk8rgoelz]

I audibly shouted "SIIIIICK" when you showed the topological renderings. Instant subscription.

[@robertomartin8731]

I bought a used Keyence LT-9500 it uses piezo actuators to move the laser it is an amazing piece of tech available on the used market.

[@brianfari9731]

your light setup was so good :)

[@KlaudiusL]

Great video. With that amount of data and variations, you could train a Neural Network, for sure final result will be noticeable

[@willusher3297]

Amazing work. I think there's a lot more you could do on the optimization side - like setting the z scan range based on the height of adjacent points (although if you're post-processessing the data, you'd have switch to doing some of that in real[-ish] time). I think this would particularly help in things like the screw threads (unless you're physically limited in range by something else). Would it be possible to trade off precision for sample volume? (sounds like it would at least require re-gearing the stage motors)

[@yliang100]

Nice! I am waiting to see how you solve the scanning part...

[@kajvezd4727]

i have learned more about building optical set-ups from this video than in all of my 3 years in an electro-optics phd program

[@RavenLuni]

For camera implementations you could try using the point spread in the whole image instead of relying on the intensity of a single point

[@paulpease8254]

Cool project. One of the reasons confocal can be so good for biology is that it uses fluorescence, so you get isotopic emission from each point with little effect like absorption or reflection differences. Would be interesting to see if you could coat your samples in a fluorescent dye and add an emission filter if it would significantly improve the quality.

[@ryanmckenna2047]

Very cool project, I have got to make one of these!

[@sreeharijayaram7908]

If you're tired of confocal now try doing structured illumination on widefield microscopy! Much fun with something as simple as a home projector DMD.

[@Iamthelolrus]

No words... just 👏...great job

[@Nevir202]

20:57 Hilarious to me, that I know nothing about microscopy or any kind of precision metrology, but when you were talking about the images you took, and the issues they had, I came up with this exact same solution.

[@-vermin-]

Excellent content! Thank you.