FOUND: Wanted Crank Operated Stereo Microscope Stand

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atariwarrior
Posts: 78
Joined: Sun Jul 10, 2016 7:07 am

FOUND: Wanted Crank Operated Stereo Microscope Stand

Post by atariwarrior »

The lab where I work has a crank operated stereo microscope stand. It was bought in the 1990s before I started working there. I was able to find some photocopies of the pages of a brochure or catalog of this microscope stand. It's called the SMS14B Crank Operated Stereostand. I saw many years ago on EBay that someone was selling this stand with a microscope. Does anyone know more about it or who the manufacter was? Has anyone seen one for sale recently? See the attached images and PDF.

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Last edited by atariwarrior on Tue Jul 27, 2021 7:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Chris S.
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Joined: Sun Apr 05, 2009 9:55 pm
Location: Ohio, USA

Post by Chris S. »

Atari,

I don't know if the item in the lab where you work is related to what I'll show below, though it appears to work in a similar way. But I can say from experience that Velmex, the vendor whose items I'll describe below, makes truly excellent items for photomacrography. I have, use, and recommend quite a few Velmex offerings.

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Here is a pdf spec sheet for these Velmex BiSlide assemblies. Please be aware that Velmex BiSlides come up on the second-hand market rather rarely. And when they do, they command high prices.

Cheers,

--Chris

g4lab
Posts: 1437
Joined: Fri May 23, 2008 11:07 am

Post by g4lab »

There is a company(Diagnostic Instruments) in Sterling Heights Michigan (suburban Detroit).
They make boom stands of very high quality and price.

There are three reasons why I think this stand was built by Diagnostic Instruments probably in the nineties.

1) It looks to be of the kind of quality and wonderfulness of products they used to make. (Almost all of their most wonderful things are discontinued because of being too expensive to build)

2) The model number sounds like the the model of a monster boom stand I once had from them which was something like SMS 20. That one was a double extention rod ball bushing equipped boomstand that came to me from Zeiss USA and weighed a lot and was packed in a very thick walled wooden crate.

http://webstore.diaginc.com/Dual-Arm-Ba ... ms20-6.htm


3) The brochure you printed has similar graphics to a piece of DI literature that I have on an ancient transmitted light base which I have my Zeiss stereo on called a CMTB. It looks to have been designed by the same graphics person that did the brochure you attached. It is a virtually positive ID. I can email you a copy of it if you wish.

Unfortunately I have contacted DI many many times about discontinued items. They are very nice wonderful people especially in their customer service department. But it has never been possible nor feasible for them to remake stuff they discontinued. When it's gone it's gone. You could try them though. They are easy to find on the web.

https://webstore.diaginc.com/

Call their 800 number and ask for Pat Furgal. Tell her Gene in St. Louis sent you and ask her if they would build you an SMS 14. She will probably tell you she wishes they could and they get requests for it but it can't be done. But maybe they have had enough call for it to do a run, you never know.

I love their stuff and lots of it was carried by the major scope companies especially Zeiss. Very good stuff.

PS: I have a polaroid copy stand you could mount a stereo on with adjustable spring counter weighting. I know people that have thrown away the 4x5 camera and mounted stereos on them and have a sketch of such a mounting somewhere in my computer. That would be lots cheaper.

atariwarrior
Posts: 78
Joined: Sun Jul 10, 2016 7:07 am

Post by atariwarrior »

Chris S,

Thanks for your reply, image, and Velmex link. This is very useful information. That is a very nice stand. Maybe out of my price range but now I have a company name whose products I can research. I'm just researching for possibly setting up my own little microscopy lab.

atariwarrior
Posts: 78
Joined: Sun Jul 10, 2016 7:07 am

Post by atariwarrior »

Hello g4lab,

Once again, you provide some very good information. Thank you!

I am familiar with Diagnostic Instruments. They do\did make some very high quality microscopy products that are very pricey even used.

We have a similar stand at work than the one shown at your link. It is very tall and motorized but wobbly at high magnifications. We prefer using the SMS14B mounted microscope because of its very rock solid stability at high magnifications. Please email the brochure.

All the microscope salesman I meet through work tell me the same thing. They all say that stands like that are too expensive to make but people still ask for them.

Years ago, when I saw the stand on EBay, the seller would not sell the stand separately from the microscope and photographic accessories. He was selling all of it for about $4k. I'll keep looking.

g4lab
Posts: 1437
Joined: Fri May 23, 2008 11:07 am

Post by g4lab »

I have seen a number of stands available on fleabay and almost bought various ones. There was a dealer in California called McBain instruments who had a setup to mount heavy scopes on. It had a similar crank or alternatively stepper or servo motors to drive the carriage up and down.

I saw several of them on ebay but have stopped watching in the last few years because it is time to reduce the gravitational anomaly centered on my house. Usually sellers wanted pretty good money for the like three to six hundred dollars with no microscope and no baseplate. I am sure McBain charged a similar number only in thousands.

Send my your email by PM and I will send you the CMTB pdf. The style is totally identiacal including the tables and drawings in silhouette. It is from the nineties I am told.

atariwarrior
Posts: 78
Joined: Sun Jul 10, 2016 7:07 am

Post by atariwarrior »

I JUST missed out on one of these stands on EBay. It was sold with a Leica M420. The seller was offering to sell the stand separately and by the time I was able to login into EBay the whole setup was sold for $2999.

If anyone sees this stand anywhere, please let me know. This is the second time I missed out on buying such a stand. I may never see one of these again. They are rare and no one wants to sell theirs. My Leica Wild M10 would be perfect on one of these stands.

atariwarrior
Posts: 78
Joined: Sun Jul 10, 2016 7:07 am

Post by atariwarrior »

I was able to buy the stand after all for $800. Someone else just bought the M420 but didn't want the stand. The shipping cost was $225 but I think it was all worth it for this rare stand.

The only problem is that the stand is equipped with a 25 mm diameter shaft mount. I need to have an adapter made to allow me to install my Leica Wild M10 that mounts with a trapezoidal drive column.

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Rorschach
Posts: 147
Joined: Fri Mar 08, 2019 11:35 pm
Location: Finland

Post by Rorschach »

Sorry to resurrect a truly old thread! But I wanted to ask whether you got that trapezoidal to 25mm pole adapter made and where?

I have several Wild scopes and parts for the 25mm pole system but also several for the more modern trapezoidal one. So these adapters would be of great interest!

I am also considering of designing some sort of an adapter plate, actually probably a couple different ones, that would enable me to bolt Wild trapezoidal columns to bases designed for 25mm poles, and vice versa. Perhaps also to the Leica columns/bases of the early millennium (ie. the one whose cross section looks like a rectangle with rounded angles).

ChrisR
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Post by ChrisR »

Probably nothing near what you need unless you want to modify & make, but I happen to have just used a couple of these to fix footpegs to a wheelchair which has 25mm tubes:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Hunting-25-4 ... 2749.l2649

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Chris R

Rorschach
Posts: 147
Joined: Fri Mar 08, 2019 11:35 pm
Location: Finland

Post by Rorschach »

Chris, thanks for the tip! That looks like it could be handy for something else, if not for the problem at hand.

atariwarrior
Posts: 78
Joined: Sun Jul 10, 2016 7:07 am

Post by atariwarrior »

Hello Rorschach,

I had a machine shop where I work make a rectangular plate that bolts into where the 25mm post was installed. The plate has holes that line up with the bolt holes at the end of the trapezoidal drive column.

Any machine shop should be able to make this.

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