Cutting Metal inside an Electron Microscope

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rjlittlefield
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Cutting Metal inside an Electron Microscope

Post by rjlittlefield »

YouTube thought I would be interested in this. It was right.



Quick summary, this guy made a custom manual step cutting rig that would fit inside his electron microscope, then he made a short movie by repeatedly advancing the feed, sticking the rig into his scope, pumping it down, taking one picture, releasing vacuum, and removing the rig so he could repeat that for the next picture. 159 pictures at roughly 5 minutes each, for a total of 13.25 hours of image acquisition. The sequence makes a glorious slo-mo movie, and the surrounding video is both fun and informative. For example I had no idea how carbide cutters are made in such intricate shapes. I see that YouTube hosts another long video specifically on that topic (HERE, but I'll watch that later.)

--Rik

Scarodactyl
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Re: Cutting Metal inside an Electron Microscope

Post by Scarodactyl »

I like his videos a lot, and am deeply envious of his personal SEM. He does some seriously incredible projects.

MarkSturtevant
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Re: Cutting Metal inside an Electron Microscope

Post by MarkSturtevant »

That is pretty amazing! I think what I saw was that the metal being cut would periodically split apart ahead of the cutting tool. That wasn't a constant though. I suppose from a material engineering standpoint that would be of interest.
Mark Sturtevant
Dept. of Still Waters

rjlittlefield
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Re: Cutting Metal inside an Electron Microscope

Post by rjlittlefield »

Scarodactyl wrote:
Wed Jun 07, 2023 6:52 pm
deeply envious of his personal SEM
Me too. He has a couple of tours of insects -- parasitic wasp at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Aa_4wGsHNg and frult fly at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrnAsfalL9o . Many of the views would be within reach of our optical setups, but there is interesting stuff at smaller sizes, as far as you can go. Check out the wasp antennae at https://youtu.be/_Aa_4wGsHNg?t=261 (4:21).

--Rik

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