Ready for yet another useless invention? Then behold: I present to you the micro-micro-scope!
What In…
I know, the name sounds silly, but I believe it actually is one pretty fun object to keep in your pocket during a hike. Also mind that it basically is a toy version of a cheap microscope, so lower your expectations to zero.
What I did was buying a toy microscope at a thrift store (those for kids, it cost €6), tearing it down, and saving the lenses.
What I had in mind was really an extreme strip-down of every unessential bit, leaving just an ocular, a body, and an objective. After a couple of measurements, I modeled a body that could be screwed in itself (lipstick-like, so to speak) to save even more space, hoping that just by holding it in one hand would be easy enough to properly focus a glass slide held in the other hand, ideally facing the sky to light the sample.
First Results
Unfortunately, and almost obviously I’d now say, no such steady hand exits to hold a microscope in focus and on the same spot. Therefore, a couple of sketches later I printed a small support that could be slid forward and backward by rotating a knob and could act as a stop when placing the scope against an object. The print ended up with a horrible finish (probably because of the heat and humidity of that afternoon), but after some filing the result was like this:
At this point, I even managed to snap some pictures! As you can see below (random debris in a drop of water), the focus is still far from precise and no clear details can be seen, but getting a stable enough image for taking a photo I think was already a pretty good result.
Current Results
I think the micro-micro-scope reached a “usable” and possibly final state when I reprinted part of the focusing assembly (to correct screw tolerances and improve the finish) and modeled a support to hold it against my phone camera:
Finally, at this stage, I managed to get a couple of quite interesting snaps. The first one shows just enough detail to reveal the cells of a leaf, while in the second one I spotted a paramecium (most likely) swimming around:
