Hi everybody!!!
I’ve been trying to find an electron microscope to use to make album covers, but I don’t really have any experience or knowledge about which ones are good, which ones are affordable, or how to take images from them.
I know this is a music forum, and I should prooooooobably do a more science oriented one, but I figured might as well ask.
Anybody have any experience in this field?
AFAIK electron microscopes aren’t something there’s a “budget” version of. They have a probe on them so thin and so precisely machined that the electrons in orbit around atoms cause the probe to move, which lets you know there’s an atom there. And it does it so precisely that you can detect the individual atoms that make up a thing. Very precise stuff all around (just think this thing has to be able to move in terms of atom widths as well as detecting them, more extremely precise machining). I think the speedrun here is to get a friend that works at a university/lab and maybe they can hook you up with some shots. There’s probably also tons of public images and data from these things since they’re used in all sorts of research.
I was curious so I googled and for a scanning electron microscope, the price is “have your people call us and we’ll talk”
. Or in other words “if you have to ask this isn’t for you”.
For digital microscopes (which in theory you could take a direct screenshot from) it looks like you have some options. Or you could add a camera mount to an existing microscope if you already had either/both.
I have a friend here at the university that runs the local SEM, so I’ve been lucky, (haven’t really had many samples ran I guess because I’m lazy) but I remember at one point there was a university or company somewhere you could send any sample in for free and they would run it for you. Not sure if that’s still a thing but worth searching for!
This was done with a 120€ china microscope from amazon.
You can record 1080p videos with it onto an sd card or shoot some photos. I normally use it for analyzing and fixing electronics.