Microscope for stylus inspections? Stylus cleaning?
I'm not sure if we're having a TT setup clinic on Saturday. If so, it might be nice to inspect stylii for wear, dirt, etc. I recently picked up a fairly nice AO Reichert-Jung 150 microscope for $30 with the idea of setting it up to look at stylii. It needs cleaning first and that may be all I get to do before Saturday.
To really work well for stylus inspection, I'll have to modify or remove the slide stage and create or find a good side lighting setup. With the slide stage in place, it works fine if you take the stylus out of the cartridge so that the tip is within the focusing range of the scope. I've shone an LED flashlight in from the side and that works OK. The right way to do it is with diffused light sources on each side.
EDIT - I just ordered the same 20W halogen
lights used in Sparky's stylus microscope build thread. They should get here by Thursday. I'm not sure I'll be able to get them mounted up on the microscope before Saturday but I'll try.
If there's interest in checking stylii, I'll clean this up and will bring it. If anyone has lights that could illuminate the stylus from the sides and top, please bring them along. Of course, if someone has a microscope already set up to do this, it would be better to use that than whatever I can come up with.
Since I'm betting that some of the stylii will turn out to be dirty, if anyone has good stylus cleaner and technique, we could clean them too. I'm sure people would be happy to pay a couple of bucks for the stylus cleaner used.