This Amscope at 10x has served me very well. Depth perspective is tough without 2 eyeballs. I have enough encountered a digital setup I would want to work under for more than 1 hour. To get something clear without lag usually means 1000+. At that price, I would consider getting some else to do rework if it takes longer than I am comfortable with the Amscope and requires super fine pitch work.
yeah that looks useful, i use the ring light since i want to minimise shadows for imaging work but it’d be handy to have that gooseneck too. i should get that extensible y boom as well. this is turning into an expensive thread 
its always interesting seeing other peoples workspaces and seeing the common items, the blue ipa dispensers etc.
not to go too far off thread, but one thing i’ve wanted is to be able to overlay the design over the boards, so i started putting something together, spent about 20 minutes to parse the eagle xml and draw it, so far so good. i’ve added the tracking and that in, so just have to hook up all the rest…
i wanted dual video output from the camera, so i ordered this box, and confirmed it works with the camera, 2k monitor and capture card.
Thanks everyone for the suggestions and thoughts. I went for the Amscope SM-3T with the 144 LED light ring. The optical quality is fantastic. – Seems as good as the Nikon with the fiber optic light ring I had at my last day job. I can’t wait for financial justification for a camera!
Nice!
I just moved and I’m setting up a somewhat similar configuration to yours. I’m a hot air user though.
Hot air is on the wish list. I started a thread on the topic last month. I am waiting until I have a customer or R&D requirement before I buy.
I like the microscope cover. But, the table is a little to clean to be doing any work!
I just set it up yesterday . I haven’t actually built anything on it, yet, and I still need to add an outlet in order to get electricity to it.
Microscope cover also serves as a banya hat.
I have the AmScope SM-4TZ-144A here, very similar, plus the USB camera. Feeding the camera to a desktop monitor works great for inspection or extended periods of heads-up detail work. Also use an OptiVisor and a illuminated 7x aspheric hand magnifier, sometimes both in series.
Hey Darryl (or anyone else that might know) -
I have always avoided the ring light illuminators because I WANT shadows. If gives depth/3D to what I’m doing so I can see how far the part is off the board as I place it. Plus it shows defects better when trying to show a supplier. So I’ve always used directional light sources. Well, I need something better than I’m using today for my AmScope.
So, I see the SM-4TZ-144A has a ring light that has 4 zones and claims to be able to show shadows, etc. How does it work? Does it really work as claimed? Occasionally, having a full ring would be nice but good directional light is a priority. So, how well does that work?
Thanks,
Keith
the amscope ring light i have on my boom scope has the three circles of leds at slight angles with a narrow beam, they cast somewhat of a shadow i can grab some pics if it helps, though not always easy to capture
LEDs are controlled by quadrant, each independently switched with the 4 arrow buttons. The level can be set with the +/- buttons. So you should be able to cast shadows in 4 directions.
yeah it’s really neat, there are a couple versions now. it’s 1K per year for the desktop app and since its in my wheelhouse i ended up just rolling my own. i should tidy it up and throw it on github, its one of those apps that has just grown in specific utility for my use case so i may try to do a specific version. it started off as an app to measure circles.
The fact that that’s in your wheelhouse is impressive! I’d be interested in a macro version for inspectors checking large assemblies.
apologies to the thread for off-topicness, but here is a stitched image from my eakins with an auto XY table. i’m still in dev with it but its pretty basic capture, move, capture, stitch(with helion at the moment) my next step is to have the focus stack + the xy capture.
also apologies for dust and what not, but we’re in socal so fire, and we just had insulation and drywall work so our place is dust central at the moment.
i’m driving a tinyg to control the xy, a stickvise to hold the pcb and a couple of Amazon.com held together with a 3d printed block. i didn’t overlay the pcb schematic since i’m working on the camera control side.
I am shopping for the HAYEAR 34MP also. I have a setup with a microscope, but it’s annoying to dismantle wires etc when I need to do a modification
@ChrisGammell: Seems like you have a camera distance of at least 60cm. Do you need other special lense than than the 0.5x to do that?
I use the one that comes with it, I’m not sure if it’s 0.5x or what. It’s a pretty long lens though, physically.
One thing that helps is even if you are further away, the digital zoom will make up the difference. It’s adjustable up to 5x. There is some image degradation, but nothing terrible.