Zeiss measuring microscope base

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enricosavazzi
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Joined: Sat Nov 21, 2009 2:41 pm
Location: Västerås, Sweden
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Zeiss measuring microscope base

Post by enricosavazzi »

When I saw this measuring microscope on eBay, I was not able to resist, in spite of the relatively high price and the fact that shipment was 1/3 of the total price.

It came in two separate packages (!) because of the weight, and when the base is assembled as shown I can barely lift it a short distance. Total height of the stand is 56 cm and the total travel of the geared platform slightly more than 20 cm. The traveling platform is not counterbalanced and must be locked with the small side knob. The whole base is made of machined iron or alloy casting with some chrome-plated brass, no aluminium in sight. There are a few round hatches (mostly removed in the picture) on the column that give access to some internal wiring, but there is no circuitry.

It came as an almost complete microscope, with monocular head (containing a large erecting Amici roof prism and a "tube lens"), eyepiece, fixed green filter, 3x objective and some mechanical adjustments I cannot quite figure out yet. A transmitted illuminator with a simple condenser shines through the slit in the base. Unfortunately it came with no micrometric stage. It is all built with no savings of material in mind. The base is a single cast piece except for the back, and so is the column. The gear is usable only for rough focusing, or for adjusting the height of a microscope/camera before the real, finer focusing with other means (it is however the only focuser of the original microscope, understandable since probably it did not exceed 10x at the objective).

Image

My planned use at the moment is as a base for my Mitutoyo FS-60 microscope for stacking, which suffers from a relatively short coarse focusing, not enough to allow the use of a tall micrometric/tilt stage or transmitted illuminator on the base.

It would also be nice to have some Zeiss literature or information on this scope, since a cursory Google search did not turn up anything (except for the pictures from the original eBay ad). The base has a 57420 engraved, probably a model or part number. Additional part numbers visible on the head are 59688 and 54832. The 3x objective is 352594.
--ES

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