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OpenFlexure Microscope, an open-source optical microscope

113 points| fybs | 4 years ago |openflexure.org | reply

39 comments

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[+] meta-level|4 years ago|reply
Is it just the my lack of coffee or did they manage to build a website for a microscope without one single example picture taken with that device?
[+] mhb|4 years ago|reply
Isn't that because the focus of the project is on the mechanics of the microscope and not the optics? You could show nice photos even with a non-flexure based mechanism. The advantage is the usability.
[+] Dowwie|4 years ago|reply
The Foldscope Project has been an interesting one-- a low-cost microscope made primarily from paper, offering 140x magnification: https://www.foldscope.com/

"Foldscope Instruments Inc’s mission is to break down the price barrier between people & the curiosity and excitement of scientific exploration!"

[+] helsinkiandrew|4 years ago|reply
Isn't that a digital microscope? I thought an optical microscope would be one that just uses lenses and eyepieces to magnify and show the images to one or more eyes.

Maybe I've missed something. It looks cool - but I'm not sure I understand what the purpose of OpenFlexure is from reading the website, what does it do that an old fashioned optical/mechanical microscope doesn't (or one with a digital eyepiece)? Is this meant to find things automatically?

[+] crispyambulance|4 years ago|reply
"Flexture" refers to the type of mechanism that moves the sample stage relative to the objective lens. It means that instead of a high precision rack-and-pinion gear system that moves the stage, it uses "flexure joints" which don't necessarily need to be precision machined (they can be 3D printed).

In a flexture mechanism you apply force to a flexible bar and, because of geometry, that displacement gets translated and reduced into a much smaller displacement somewhere else. It only works with very small displacements (thus fine for microscopy). If you want to position the sample large distances, you just need to move the sample.

It's a neat idea made inexpensive by 3D printing, but the major expense here will be the optics (the objective lens). To get decent pictures of cells, like in a textbook, you're talking about $1K minimum, and it can go much higher, into the 10's, depending on application, performance and other optics (the light source and it's lenses).

[+] gliptic|4 years ago|reply
"Optical" when talking about microscopes means it's using visible light rather than, say, electrons.
[+] kasbah|4 years ago|reply
The main value of this is a low-cost precision positioning system that can be 3d-printed. A lot of the challenge of microscopy is getting the sample into the right place. And yes, this design can be motorised and controlled automatically as well.
[+] montalbano|4 years ago|reply
Earlier iterations of this were used successfully as part of a water quality monitoring in Tanzania:

https://www.waterscope.org/about-us/

Richard Bowman (previously Cambridge uni, now Bath) was the main driver of these microscopes and is a great, highly intelligent person. Many other people have contributed to the project in small and large ways over the years.

Some other links:

https://3dprint.com/165457/openflexure-3d-printed-microscope...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7249832/

[+] blululu|4 years ago|reply
This is a super cool project. Though I think the website could be a lot more upfront about what is needed to make this and what this can accomplish. A quick list of pats, estimated cost, specs and a sample photo would be really helpful in assessing whether this is a better deal that a $150 used microscope. As it is, it takes three clicks to find the list of parts required and no cost estimates are offered. https://build.openflexure.org/openflexure-microscope/v6.1.5/...
[+] tomcam|4 years ago|reply
On first glance it appears to be vaporware but there is at least one published image apparently created with the device:

https://openflexure.discourse.group/t/sharing-an-almost-whol...

[+] krisoft|4 years ago|reply
I’m genuinly curious: what do you mean by vaporware?

It usually means some software or hardware which is advertised but not available to buy. Here with a few clicks you can find literal printable files, detailed manual on assembly and the software and a scientific paper describing the project. And that is just a quick scan. What makes it vaporware then?

Clearly you can’t buy it, but you can download it right now and start printing it.

[+] frostburg|4 years ago|reply
I've built variants of these years ago for a school. The positioning system works extremely well, especially given the fact that it is 3d-printed; the optics were rather limited, both by lens quality and by the use of the old rasperry pi camera sensor.