Every year the New Brunswick Museum organizes a 2-week long Biota (aka BioBlitz) to one of the wild paces in NB, known as Protected Natural Areas (PNA's), to survey the flora and fauna. This year there were 78 participants from North America and Europe. I was one of four entomologists. Concentrating...

Follow up on the suggestion by Sym; why not mount the pin in reverse?

bent tip works! Drop shape changes but that's no problem

For my insect mounting I need to add a tiny drop of PVA (polyvinyl acetate) to the tip of a very fine something (!). Currently using a minuten pin- shaft diam 0.1 mm. Problem is that the drop of PVA always forms 1 mm from the tip. Is there any alternative to the pin that will allow the drop to form ...

They have always been Hexapods (6-legged), along with the insects.
Now Hexapods divided into Insecta and Entognatha (springtails etc.).
(trivia, just a problem of being an entomologist!)

A simpler, better, 'micron-control' see:
LINK

Wow! That is a huge amount of equipment. About the only way to value it would be to check the prices of each individual part on ebay. I checked a few items: Thorlabs breadboard $175.00 Newport rotation stage $189.00 Thorlabs GNL10 goniometer $300.00 I would be surprised, when all the parts are value...

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Perhaps the most complete Studio Macro Rig posted on PMG from Richard A. Nelridge LINK

See also HERE

Final iteration After going through several different setups I have finally settled on this one. It has been in use for several years and has worked flawlessly. This setup is stable for up to 60x M Plan Nikon objective, any slight misalignment of frames is easily corrected by Zerene Stacker. The des...

I use this lens with a Raynox 250 @ f/32 on a Nikon D810 to photograph ants. I am not too worried about superb image quality, just need a decent image with as much DOF as possible. Formica glacialis, about 5 mm.

Ken,
If you place these, gill side down. on paper (white or coloured, depending on gill colour) you can get some neat patterns.
HERE

I tried stacking the Leitz lens onto an old Nikon 105 micro (the MF one that goes to 0.5x).
Thought it might be useful for field work to photograph ants.
Has potential.

condenser bottom

condenser top

rotating stage