So who will be first to build an interferometer as the encoder? I did it once with a laser diode but it was "a bit" noisy to say the least

Andrew, I assume this encoder is some sort of glass scale, are you intending to make a servo system with it?

Graham

A half step is the smallest step where you get real torque, i.e. you can step a single half step, microstepping just makes motion smoother, that might mean a shorter settle time but it is not going to provide greater resolution. At least that is my understanding. I don't think stiction is massively ...

They are basically working by messing with the phase of the light rather than through scattering, you can think of them a little like a mess of lenses. Phase of light waves is another way of representing the direction the light is travelling so by fiddling with phase you can create a diffuse light p...

Sorry I didn't realize we were on page 3, hope I am not too irrelevant.

The film Brian has is definitely not light control film as that goes on the front and is to prevent people viewing what you are looking at. The film on the back of the LCD is part of the back lighting, it is used in an effort to create an even lighting. I've been looking at various back lights as a ...

Thanks Dave, I'm probably going to use a monochrome camera without any viewfinder and either LEDS or laser light for illumination. I'm hoping to get some penetration into live insects to see more of the insect flight mechanism, possibly at high speed. I'm really not sure how well it will work, will ...

Hello,

I was just wondering if anyone has played with infra red illumination to get penetration into/through chitin?

Cheers,

Graham

Isopropyl Alcohol can be bought in maplins as a spray can or as a litre bottle.

Graham

Well I was pretty sure it was rapid prototyped but I'm not so good as to be able to recognise the technology by eye

Very nice, is the plastic part 3D printed?

Graham

Sorry my choice of angle was not great. The subject is on the end of a pin (in fact a 1mm drill blank, a posh pin) in the centre of the sphere generally. The pin can rotate and also be tilted (hence the slot) and go up and down for stacking. There is indeed a hole in the bottom which provides the ba...

I've also been experimenting with almost complete balls. My object movie rig needs to give reasonable lighting no matter what angle the object it tilted at so I ended up with this. The ball is held in place by one of my Gorrilla pod mounts, basically a section of one of the legs held to a base plate...

That's really great stuff, the manipulation would be hard enough without having to record each step so nicely.

I have a paper about this if you are interested, it also has some pretty neat photos but nothing like this.

Graham

I have made a few jigs using ball bearings and car body filler such as "Bondo" you grind a flat for your sample attachment, wax the ball and set in a lump of filler. You can cut the filler neatly with a rasor blade if you catch it just before it goes really hard, also a good time to loosen the ball ...

Wow the degree of rotation is really surprising.

Graham