Beamshaper

The mirror is attached to the base of the microscope. It has a plain surface on one side and a concave surface on the other. The mirror reflects rays from an external light source into the microscope.

When rays from an incandescent light source enter the microscope lenses, they’re not uniform. They’re travelling in multiple directions and have differing wavelengths. Once the light waves pass through the specimen and reach the objective lenses, they’re bent into parallel paths. The objective lens then projects an inverted but magnified image onto a fixed intermediate image plane within the microscope. The ocular lens further magnifies this projected image.

The eyepiece or ocular lens is attached to the top of the body tube. The rim of the eyepiece contains markings such as 5X, 10X, 15X, and 20X, which denote its magnification power. Place your eye above this lens to observe the magnified image of the object placed on the stage.

Flat-topbeam

Beam-shaping also offers the possibility of processing large areas at once, for example engraving product information without having to move the laser beam. For designing elements for large-area processing, the main challenge is the presence of speckle, which are artefacts due to undesired interference of light. LPT develops setups and algorithms to reduce the influence of speckle during processing. For testing new developments, low average power pulsed lasers are employed which allow using liquid crystal spatial light modulators instead of static diffractive optical elements. These modulators work similar to LCD screens and allow quickly displaying different structures without having to manufacture a new glass element each time. By using two sequential modulators, researchers from LPT showed speckle-free large-area beam-shaping.

Pi shaper

Compound light microscopes have their own light source (illuminator) attached to the microscope base. The light rays are focused onto the stage by the condenser, which is placed below the stage.

The object’s image must not only be enlarged but also its minute details must be clearly visible to the viewer’s eye. This aspect is called resolution. The clarity of the image produced depends on the lens quality and the frequency of the light waves falling onto the specimen. This is because light rays with high frequency have short wavelengths, which improve the image resolution.

State-of-the-art lasers produce a focus that resembles either a bell (Gaussian) curve or a rectangular (top-hat) shape and therefore the resulting heat profile is predefined. Beam-shaping is a technique for influencing the shape of the focus and therefore forming the heat profile in a desired manner. This offers the possibility to mitigate defects and increase the processing window as well as the production efficiency.

To shape laser beams, so-called diffractive optical elements can be used, which are glass slides with a surface relief of a few micrometers. By introducing a phase delay, they influence the propagation of light. The Institute of Photonic Technologies (LPT) works on predicting optimized beam shapes for specific applications, calculating the appropriate relief, and showing advantages in materials processing. As an example, this technique was successfully used at LPT for welding a crack-prone aluminum-copper alloy, which resulted in a weld seam quality close to a polished surface and an enlarged processing window.

Gaussianbeam

A compound microscope is a type of optical microscope that uses visible light and multiple lenses to help you observe a real and magnified image of tiny objects. Through a compound lens system, it produces enlarged images of microscopic objects like living and dead organisms, tissues, and cells.

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Laguerre Gaussbeam

Body tube. A hollow tube attached to the upper end of the arm. The upper portion (draw tube) contains the eyepiece lens. The body tube length is usually around 6.3 inches or 160 millimeters.

In 1590, three Dutch spectacle makers invented an optical microscope with more than one lens. This was the first compound microscope. Today, compound microscopes are used in most research laboratories, hospitals, and schools. Read on to learn more about what a compound microscope is and how it works so that you can select the best type of microscope for you.

Human beings have always been curious about their surroundings. But when people first began to study flora and fauna, their observation of nature was limited to the visible world. Once the concept of magnification was introduced, researchers discovered that there was more than meets the eye.

Laserbeamhomogenizer

Diaphragm. Attached below the stage, it can be either a disc or iris diaphragm that controls the intensity of the light entering the microscope.

Stage. A flat plate connected to the lower end of the curved arm. It has a hole (aperture) at the center that allows the passage of light. Specimens to be examined are mounted onto the stage.

Beamexpander

Adjustment knobs. There are two knobs for fine and coarse adjustment. They move the body tube to bring the object being studied into focus.

How to design a Gaussian to top hatbeamshaper

Lenses with high magnification power also tend to provide greater resolution. Here are the two main types of lenses in a compound microscope:

Magnification power is calculated as the extent of image enlargement performed by the lens. For example, a magnification power of 10X indicates an approximate 10-fold increase in the size of the object’s image. Because compound microscopes have multiple lenses, the total magnification achieved is a numeric multiple of the magnification powers of all the individual lenses.

The laser is a universal tool in materials processing. Focusing a high-power laser to a single spot allows various applications like welding and laser-based additive manufacturing. Heating and consequent melting of the material mainly drives these processes in which the laser beam acts as a heat source. For the processing result, resolidification is critical as defects like cracks can occur but also spatter might be produced during laser interaction due to overheating and turbulences in the melt pool. An important factor for these defects is the heat distribution in the work piece.

“Micro” means small and “scope” means to see or view. Thus, humans developed microscopes to observe small things that are invisible to the naked eye. The earliest optical microscopes were only a step up from a magnifying lens. They had simple scopes connected to a single lens. This resulted in limited magnification ability, and they were called simple microscopes.

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Lenses with high magnification power bend light rays much more than lenses with low magnification power. This makes the image of the object come into focus at a much shorter distance from the lens. Hence, lenses with high magnification power are placed much closer to the specimen under observation. Conversely, low-power lenses are placed further away from the prepared slide.

They’re attached to the nosepiece at the base of the body tube. They can be of many types — scanning (4X magnification), low power (10X magnification), high power (40X magnification), oil immersion (100X magnification), and specialty (2X, 50X oil, 60X, and 100X dry magnification).

Ongoing research includes the direct manufacturing of beam-shaping elements in bulk glass, which would offer more degrees of freedom compared to a relief. Beyond additive manufacturing, beam shaping also plays an increasing role in other directions of research, for example as a tool in optical metrology.

Microscope lenses use transmitted, refracted, or reflected light to increase the image size of the object being viewed. This aspect is called magnification. The magnification power of a microscope depends on the lenses’ ability to bend light waves.

Microscopes have become a critical part of modern science laboratories, whether that may be while you’re still studying in schools and colleges or working at hospitals and research facilities.