Soldering and inspection microscope (2022 selection) - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Warhawk
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 24, 2022, 09:26:51 am
content: Guys, I am after a reasonable stereo microscope for soldering and inspection to equip my home lab. Of course, I used google and searched the forum before asking. However, some threads are couple years old. I believe there has been some development on the market.Would you recommend an older quality brand (Olympus) or a new non-name from China]?Is there something to specifically avoid?I appreciate any tips.PS: I have +5.25 diop. reading glasses.PS: If we stay below 500Eur shipped = great, but I am willing to pay more if it makes sense.

author: Paceguy
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 31, 2022, 06:54:55 am
content: I would recommend purchasing a good quality used one. I bought a Nikon one on ebay at a good price. It is in very good condition and works fine I also picked up a Bausch and Lomb that they were scrapping were I worked and it does a great job too.Then there are those USB electronic magnifiers that you can consider if you happen to have a laptop or PC on your bench.

author: jfiresto
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 31, 2022, 08:54:45 am
content: Where are you, exactly, how patient are you and how long will you use the microscope?I prefer to buy used, modular system microscopes from around the 1980s, as I am in Germany, willing to wait for good examples to appear and like to buy flexible, well made tools I can use for a long time, even for things I had not anticipated.I could see buying a Chinese "stencil" microscope, if you need something off the shelf, now, that will answer a standard set of needs for the medium term.

author: jmelson
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 31, 2022, 03:38:31 pm
content: The KEY for soldering is "working distance" ie. how far below the objective the microscope is in focus. You want about 4" (100mm).Also, you want a ring light that doesn't eat up all this space. I have seen ring lights that hang 40-50mm below the bottom of the scope, that is bad.I ended up making my own ring lights. Just a ring of PCB material with a circular cut that makes two concentric copper rings. You connect them to a 9-12 V wall wart supply, and place 3mm while LEDs and 1K current limiting resistors around the circle. Then, mount the PC board ring around the scope, and bend the LEDs to point at the viewing area. But, I have seen decent LED ring lights now that should work better than the old ones.Also, I use the scope without my glasses, so I need to adjust the eyepiece focus for my very mismatched eyes. This gives a much bigger viewing area.I have a relatively new Chinese unit at work with the dual-beam stand. That works well for work on larger boards as it keeps the stand off to the side.I have an old Olympus at home that works well, and used an American Optical scope before that.Jon

author: jfiresto
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 31, 2022, 05:12:48 pm
content: More than 100mm working distance would not hurt especially with hot air tools.My eye glasses now have significant cylinder corrections. I found I could see quite a bit more detail, and still get the field of view, when I substituted high eye point oculars and wore my glasses.

author: loki42
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 05, 2022, 11:40:49 am
content: I use a stereo Carl Zeiss from around the dawn of time. It's a great bit of kit. Comfortable, nice feeling focus knobs and I got it very cheap. Lighting is a big thing to get right. I mount a ring light on one of my fume extractor hoses which both forces me to have the extractor in a decent spot at seems to work pretty well. I'd contemplate more lights though as shadows are annoying when you're holding something / iron etc.

author: twospoons
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 06, 2022, 04:53:32 am
content: I bought a Chinese stereo zoom microscope (Eakins) and it works just fine. NZ$450, for a 7x to 45x zoom, also included 0.5x and 2x Barlow lenses. The 0.5x Barlow puts the scope into the right range for soldering and gives a working distance of at least 100mm.15 years ago the chinese scopes i'd used were a bit crap compared to the Meiji and Nikon we had in the office, but its seems the Chinese suppliers have upped their game somewhat. The only Carl-Zeiss I've used had awful eyepieces - very sensitive to eye position.Avoid the USB microscopes - the image lag will drive you nuts while trying to solder.

author: Warhawk
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 07, 2022, 09:46:44 am
content: Quote from: jfiresto on March 31, 2022, 08:54:45 amI am based in Germany too.Thank you everyone for your replies. I ended up thinking between a used microscope and AmScope SM-4T. However, the "original" AmScope is not available in Germany and some SM-4T microscopes (without AmScope label) are questionable.At the end I scored on eBay a used Olympus SZ 40 from Italy. I paid 310€ shipped to Germany. The microscope arrived yesterday and it is in very good condition with clean optics.I saw that some other people mentioned SZ 40 for soldering (eevblog, reddit). tl;dr; I am happy I decided for it.