Prismatic telescopic eyeglasses (such as surgeons use) are proper 3D with a decent working range. Because they're head-mounted, you can put your head anywhere you like and the eyepiece goes with your eyes.
Cheap telescopes don't have the prisms, so you have to converge your eyes, and I find that very tiring.
Clifford Heath.
My Bausch and Lomb stereozoom is about 5 inches working distance; there's dissecting microscopes in stereo that have only an inch or so. Some addon lenses lower the working distance; you might have one attached, try with it removed.
The microscope pod can be put in a tilt/swivel housing that orients it to suit you, but the more common vertical-rack focus mount is kinda limited. While good stereo optics is available online used, the better stands are HEAVY and don't ship well. So, I cheaped out and didn't get one either.
Hmm, right my function generator does that... somehow it doesn't seem the same to me.
George h.
Yeah, I'm still trying to understand how it works. I expected the
400k (quench resistor) to give me a long RC recharge time after the discharge edge. But that's not what I see. You need a big resistor so you can get to a large voltage above breakdown. (otherwise it doesn't self quench... just breaking down all the time, like a HV(>10V) zener near the break down point.)I was reading this last night.. it's pretty good.
Apparently the recharging of the spad gives me the dead time. (figure 8)
Lots to do!
George H.
Maybe the spad has built-in capacitance to ground, on the 400K side. That's maybe what discharges into your 1K.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc picosecond timing precision measurement jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com http://www.highlandtechnology.com
It's fun to play with the txline model in LT Spice, to see how things like this behave. LT Spice now includes the AD800x series amps, too.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc picosecond timing precision measurement jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com http://www.highlandtechnology.com
Flux smoke will eventually get on the lens. Clean it every year or so.
Exactly.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc picosecond timing precision measurement jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com http://www.highlandtechnology.com
The Mantis is great. It's comfortable to work under and not a bit fussy about where you put your eyes. I poke a camera into the hood and take pictures too.
This can be positioned over all sorts of big or small stuff, even poked down into rackmount gear.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc picosecond timing precision measurement jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com http://www.highlandtechnology.com
Tants seem reliable on regulator outputs if you derate the voltage
3:1. Their ESRs are often just right.-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc picosecond timing precision measurement jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com http://www.highlandtechnology.com
A Mantis still forces you to hold your head in a fixed position. 3D is of little value when you are soldering to a flat pcb. Autofocus with the Canon is a big time saver. The Canon feeds HDMI video directly to the pc. With the Mantis, you have to mount a separate camera in the focus to capture images, or buy a very expensive Mantis.
The Canon is much cheaper than the Mantis and gives complete freedom of head position for long hours of work.
Some have mentioned the Mantis can wobble.
You need an exhaust fan so you don't breath the fumes into your lungs.
The most expensive feature of the Mantis, from my perspective, is its footprint, not its price. My aversion to clutter makes it all but impossible for any new device to justify its own footprint on one of my bench tops. Your Canon idea inspired me to finally get acquainted with my cam, which has been sitting on the shelf since it was acquired. It turns out that one of my laboratory stands, which is already used for chemistry and to hold a hot air gun vertically over a pre-heater, can be further reused and MacGyvered into a Vixia stand. The only thing missing is a STV250N AV cable, which is presently on its way to me. That's how it rolls in modern medicine. Providers use a PC to view the real time output of endoscopes and other manipulated, intrusive instrumentation.
73,-- Don Kuenz, KB7RPU
I have even seen derated ones fails over time. Unfortunately in expensive test equipment which really ticked off the owners. Of course, this always happened well after the end of the warranty.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/
If your chair height is right, it's comfortable. The Compact mantis has good geometry for me, since I'm 5'8". The older models had the view port higher.
3D is ofI think it's wonderful. You can see the shape of solder fillets much better than you can in 2D... move your head around a little and the shape is instantly obvious. And the relative positions of things - board, part, iron tip, solder, wick, wires - are much more obvious in
3D.Tinning a wire end in mid-air is hard in 2D. It's easy in 3D.
Autofocus with the Canon
If I want a picture, I just poke my camera into the hood and shoot.
Mine doesn't, between earthquakes.
I've used most PCB optical aids, including some very expensive ones, and I think the Mantis is by far the best.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc lunatic fringe electronics
The Mantis mount takes up a small patch off in the corner of my bench.
It swings out of the way when I don't need it.
It does cover a big board, or an open box with stuff inside, over a huge area. Some of our boards are big and won't fit into a stereo microscope (or the new post-mounted FLIR.)
I can have a live board running, with cables and all that, and swing the Mantis over it in two seconds. That's great for probing fine-pitch parts. I can also shut off power, swing over the Mantis and change a part, and power back up without disconnecting everything. Sometimes I don't even shut off power.
A decent sized monitor would be very inconvient on my bench.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc lunatic fringe electronics
The main issue with the camera is it needs threads on the lens to accomodate different filters. It should say in the specs what the filter diameter is. For the Canon VIXIA, it is 34mm. See page 178 of the VIXIA manual:
Then you need a suitable adapter to mount the desired closeup lens and filters. eBay has endless varieties of adapters, filters and lens at very cheap prices.
The next thing you will need is a decent HDMI monitor. This can be at the back of the desk so it is not taking up working area. I have an additional monitor to display LTspice or Eagle schematics for wiring prototypes. This requires an additional mouse and keyboard which take up more space. I am in the process of adding wider shelving to increase the working area and add additional shelves to stack the computer, oscilloscopes, signal generators, fume extraction, and common parts storage. An additional shelving to the side will hold HP spectrum analyzers, signal generators and other instruments that are far too large to mount on the main working shelf.
A small heater under the main shelf will provide warmth for those cold winter nights.
I found moving from a 3d optical microscope to a 2d HDMI display very easy. I missed nothing. I can see the shape of solder fillets easily by looking at the reflections. The main thing is to examine the quality of the solder joint. Did part of the joint make poor contact, or did the joint move as the solder cooled, and so forth.
No problem. The working distance is 10", and you are not glued to the lens or a spot in space. Just look down at the wire and apply solder. Or look at the monitor. If the image of the wire covers the iron tip, the wire is above the tip, and vice versa.
Of course, shorting the output is just as good as a nasty inrush.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
-- Dr Philip C D Hobbs Principal Consultant ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 http://electrooptical.net http://hobbs-eo.com
Use Synergy or something like it and you only need one keyboard and mouse.
Clifford Heath.
The difference is that a short can't keep pumping energy into the cap, whereas a power supply can.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc lunatic fringe electronics
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