Thanks Mike, I should have mentioned in the OP, one of my goals for this project was to see how much of the inkjet printer I could reuse. I was also simply curious as to how accurate it could be. Clearly, the printer makers in this case hp, get very high precision -- this drive train feeds the paper...

Rik, Here is the graph: http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/userpix/1213_1000_7ms_12v_C1C2_D1_N8__Scatter_1.png This was from a test run - I wanted to establish a baseline to compare with possible improvements. The run was 1000 sequential steps resulting from activating the motor for 7 ms with a 1...

I've been experimenting with a homemade stacking rail using parts from a discarded InkJet printer. These cheap printers use servo motors with encoders rather than stepping motors, so I wasn't sure what kind of precision could be achieved. At any rate, I got it working, and the results were acceptabl...

It would be helpful to know more about how this unusual camera needs to be triggered. The canon digital camera I am familiar with uses weak pull-up on the shutter signal line which is triggered by connecting to low (gnd), also provided by the camera. This allows any simple switch mechanism to work, ...

I'm not aware of it having been updated either. There's a 'last' version, as in last version ever put out, that's the one I'm hosting. This is my understanding as well, the sha256sum (ec88a0328b4dc0bc4d4a8e3923007bb567746c357f42908fabd0bdd05f26b3f2) is identical for the current CombineZP.msi file a...

It seems to work quite well in the Wine environment under Linux. I downloaded and ran it under the current release of Wine for Fedora 26. The installer ran without error. On loading, the windows overlapped and needed moved around, but I was able to run an alignment and several stack methods and save...

You don't quite get a log pot, but you can bend the curve a bit with a parallel resistor as descibed here: http://www.geofex.com/article_folders/p ... tscret.htm
I've used that technique on an LED controller and it improved the response.

Hey, this may be more complicated than you were expecting :( It looks like the PWM dimmer you have does switch the full load. This could be a problem for connecting a constant current regulator down stream (in series) since the CC regulator may not like being fed a PWM power source. It may work fine...

Hey Pau, it would help to know the specifications on your PWM device also.

The xoffset graph several posts above struck me in it's similarity to graph 5.1 at this link: http://homepage.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/step/micro.html . I wonder if what you are seeing could be the "detent effect" discussed there in relation to the non-ideal behavior of stepping motors when using sine-co...

I harvested a nice focus block from an old Zeiss Invertoscope over in this thread: Homebrew Stacking Controller . The machining was done with basic woodshop tools and hand tools. The post and pictures probably descibe the process better than I could in-line here. I just disassembled the block comple...

Has it been constructed by an insect?

With my current set of optics limited to below 20X magnification my currrent limit of 3um per step is more than enough resolution in full stepping mode. The smallest slices I've used so far are 4 whole steps (about 12 um). One of the primary reasons to go to 1/2 stepping (aside from movement resolut...

Thanks for all the comments folks. I'm still working on getting stuff posted here. The project is currently functioning for my purposes so I'm mostly working on packaging and waiting for some connectors to arrive. I have thought of trying to make a video at some point, but my best camera for video h...

A couple of test shots with the new stacking controller I'm working on. Some electronics bits that have seen better days. http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/userpix/1213_ChiptTest6_10X_8s_78f_small_1_640_1.jpg The chip from a classic 74H00 quad NAND gate ceramic DIP package that broke open. Full ...