Olympus BX60 - my new metallurgical microscope

7 years ago I wrote about buying my first metallurgical microscope from China. During these 7 years I was going the path of Japanese cyberpunk - replacing it's body parts one-by-one to Olympus ones, until the only remaining original piece were body and illuminator (which caused most of remaining optical issues). But now it was time to replace remaining parts to Olympus and complete the transformation. Last year I started watching Olympus microscopes on eBay - until finally I found this Olympus BX60 from South Korea.

Shipping went flawless. Upon arrival I reassembled short arc lamp illuminator - I was afraid that pieces of foam could get inside, ignite and deposit dirt on optical surfaces after turn on. When I opened the illuminator - I haven't immediately noticed the lamp. But it was there - just fell out of the socket. I was lucky that it did not broke: this tiny arc lamp (Ushio USH 102-D) costs 100-160$+. After assembly and quick illuminator tuning - everything was fine. The only minor complication was that this microscope was used only for fluorescent observation, so all cubes were for fluorescence. I will have to buy regular, bright-field neutral cube separately.

Lenses were very good and useful, without scratches on the optical surfaces: UPlanApo 100x/1.35 Oil, UPlanApo 40x/1.0 Oil, UPlanApo 20x/0.7, UPlanApo 10x/0.4, UPlanApo 4x/0.16, PlanApo 1.25/0.04.

Quality comparison will still take some time, but I hope that soon readers and subscribers of my blog on microelectronics zeptobars.com would be able to enjoy microchip photos with higher quality.