10/2/96
I'm a high school teacher whose been given a vintage 1980 Cambridge
StereoScan 250 SEM. It is up and running as well as expected but now I
need to figure out how to get it more flexible. The recording device is a
Polariod affair that is much too expensive for numerous high schoolers.
What was intimated was hooking up a digitalizer to the TV mode of the
viewing screen and bypass the HRRT.(?) It was also told to me that if we
wanted to used the HRRT to capture the image digitally that it would take
a bit more money as well as smarts. (Two things I'm rather short on right
now).
My mission (of which I am pleading for help with) is to find a product and
a vendor of such a digitalizer, a price, and all the pertinent information
to present at a meeting next week.
Help please!
Stephen Murray
smurray@u.Arizona.EDU
We have an S250 Mk II, also. I've got the image store unit on
ours. It has a standard TV output (NTST). If you ask the people at
Leo, they might be able to find you an old used one, for a
decent price, considering how old it is. BTW, it's the HRRU,
"high resolution record unit."
We have a thermal printer attached to the NTST output, but the
image quality is poor. The HRRU has a resolution of 2500 verticle
lines, and type 52 Polaroid film is about 1500 lines. The NTST
should be about 350 lines. Thermal prints can be very
inexpensive, but the resolution will never be very good.
At one time we had a data acquisition board attached, and took
images from the visual display unit (don't remember line counts).
The problem was software for handling the image capture and
processing. A rudimentary version was developed locally, but then
the support was dropped.
There are many commercial people in this business now. PC based
image capture should be the best. I'm sure one can help you, but
it will be costly. I'd like to know what the best solution is,
since I'm not happy with ours, but our budgets are now very
tight, too. Digitized images can be electronically distributed and
processed as well. These are the reasons I have renewed interest.
Please keep this discussion public. I'm sure there are many
people interested in this.
Dave King
deking@vnet.ibm.com
Congrats on getting an SEM into a school environment!
I kept this email that appeared on the listserver a few months ago for just
such an occasion. I hope it's helpful. I left the author's details at the
bottom for you to direct further questions. I'd suggest that if you go
this way (i.e. on a Mac) that you get hold of the public domain software
'Image' from NIH - it's a very handy Image Processing/Image Analysis
package.
Another option might be the frame grabber we have on our Cambridge S120
called 'Image Slave' which slots into a PC, and I'd get hold of Image Tools,
another pub.dom. IA/IP program for PC's. To find an 'Image Slave'
distributor in the US you might ask Steve Wisbey of OED Pty Ltd here in Oz
(sbwisbey@ozemail.com.au).
I realise that money it a key issue but I'd strongly recommend trying to
get a Back-Scatterd Electron detector at some stage. Kids love looking at
hairy biological things which are buggers for charging under the beam which
produces crap Secondary Electron images. The image from a BSE detector
will not be troubled by charging 99% of the time.
Good Luck,
-------------snip---------
From the feedback I obtained to my previous posting it seems that there is
astrong interest for home made systems for digital imaging on analog SEMs.
Here is my cooking recipe for digital imaging on a JEOL840 using a MacIIci.
The cost of the whole system was about US$ 700 and two days of work.
Ingredients:
1 MAC ADIOS IIJr from GW Instruments, 35 Medford St. Sommerville, MA 02143,
Tel: (617) 625-4096
1 MAC ADIO ABO (Analog Breakout box)
1 9ft cable with a 14 pin connector on the microscope side, loose ends to
connect to the terminal on the ADIOS board. The cable connects on the
microscope side to connector JA2 on the rear panel of the JEOL840. This
connection will control the SEM. A BNC cable connects to the JEOL connector
NA8. This cable will carry the video signal to one of the AD channels of
the MACADIOS board. The video signal on NA8 carries the same signal which
will be displayed on the SEM screen, thus whatever signal is selected for
the SEM display, BSE, SE, or ??, will be recorded by the digital imaging
sytem.
1 small software, controlling the beam. It will deflect the beam and read
in the Video signal at each position. The resolution can be set by the
user.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Pin connections on the JA2 connector are as following:
Pin 1: X-deflection connected to DA out (CHN0) Pin 2: Y-deflection
connected to DA out (CHN1)
Pin 4: Blank (blanks the SEM screen) connected to one of the Digital Out
channels
Pin 5: Relay (controls the relay in the JEOL840 for external scan coil
control, (this relay is build in each microscope), connected to one of the
Digital Out channels
Pin 7, 14: Ground connected to Common
The board should be set up to 10V on the DA channels. 0 Volt is in the
screen center. For the X-deflection, +9 Volts is on the left of the screen
(when sitting in front of the microscope), -9 Volt on the right side. For
the Y-deflection, -9 Volt is the top of the screen, and +9 Volt is the
bottom.
For external control, set the Digital Out which is connected to Pin 5 to
high, low will give the control back to the JEOL system.
Blank (connected to Pin 4) is on when set to high, setting this Digital Out
to low will leave the beam on (be careful, this can easily burn a black
mark on your screen, always watch your screen when setting up the system,
best is to turn brightness and contrast down).
The small C-code we are using is part of an other application (BKD
analysis), thus it is not stand alone and not necessarily helpful to
everyone. If interested, I can e-mail the code later to those who would
like to have it as a guide for their own development.
If anybody needs more help, please let me know.
Hasso Weiland
Alcoa Technical Center
Alcoa Center, PA 15069, USA
412 337-3133
weiland_h@atc.alcoa.com
----------end snip----------
Geoff Avern
Manager
Microscopy Laboratories
Australian Museum Email: geoffa@amsg.austmus.oz.au
6 College St Ph: (61)(2) 9320 6198
Sydney, Australia. 2000 Fax: (61)(2) 9320 6059
Our company E.L.I. sprl (Belgium) has developped a vey powerful system for
electronic microscope grabbing: ORION 4.1.
We are sure you will understand how easy it can be to upgrade your SEM by
acquiring digital pictures with such a convivial package.
For your information, the PC minimum requirements to run ORION 4.1 are the
following:
* Pentium 100 Mhz - 16 Mb RAM
* ISA slot 16 bits full length
* VGA graphic card 1 Mb
The price for the ORION 4.1 package (hardware card + software) is 8.000-US$.
The "installation" includes:
* the physical installation itself and the tests
* a full training for the users
* one year hot line guarantee (in case of on site service, the travelling
costs will be charged)
The price for this service depends on the country (do we have a distributor
or not) and/or the technical capability of the customer to install itself
the connection with on line help (phone, fax or Email) from our technical
service.
Don't hesitate to contact me for more information and/or have a look to our
http site:
http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk
Best regards,
Paul Vanderlinden.
Sales Manager.
To contact us:
E.L.I. sprl
Technical support:
Jean-Louis Leclef: Phone: +32 67 21 25 07
Fax : +32 67 22 09 53
Email: jleclef@hypercon.com
Sales support:
Paul Vanderlinden: Phone: +32 2 215 20 02
Fax : +32 2 726 08 65
Email: orion@infoboard.be
There is a relatively inexpensive product to get an SEM image into a
computer from GW Electronics, called Printerface. Larry Glassman of GW says
it is a mail-order-type product, easy to install. Contact him at:
GW Electronics
6981 Peachtree Industrial Blvd.
Norcross GA 30092
Phone: 404-449-0707
Fax: 404-449-0284
I use a more expensive product, called PCI, and I find it is a wonderful
way to show the SEM image to a class full of students or print out laser
copies for all.
Luck
Mary.
mager@pop.unixg.ubc.ca