Need one of these for fine pitch SMD work. The microscopy groups have deemed just about all made in China to be crap unless they are Zeiss, Olympus, Nikon or Lieca brands. Are there any favorable opinions on cheap Chinese no-name brands used for SMD work?
Stereo microscopes are dim and hard to work under. Get a Mantis: they're amazing... hyper stereo vision, stunningly bright and clear, lots of working distance. They show up on ebay fairly often.
John
I have enough trouble working a mouse when the display is turned on its side.
I love mine. There's an adjustment on the side for your eyeball spacing, and things can get very weird if it's set wrong, like you can dial in *negative* depth perspective. Also, it's best to remove glasses.
With the Mantis, you can move your head around and change the viewing perspective! We have stereo microscopes and two expensive video systems, but I really prefer the Mantis, especially to work under.
John
I looked though one of those and damn ear made me seasick. The boom that is mounted is very long and not rock solid so that the whole thing sways. Stereo microscopes are not dim when you use proper lighting.
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Boris Mohar
Hello John,
Best is to try the Mantis before plunking down money. Some people love them, others don't like them. I cannot easily work with the Mantis.
There is another option: If you can train yourself to be able to work with your hands while looking into a totally different direction you could use a camera - monitor setup. We had that in a clean room for catheter manufacturing and whenever I had to experiment in there I just loved that. Plus you can easily record to create a training video or take JPEG shots of the different assembly steps.
Regards, Joerg
Hello Richard,
That's a good one. People start having trouble much earlier though. On this PC the mouse is on the left because there is no space for it to the right. A surprising number of people can't work it that way. Same when they take a seat behind the wheel of a right-hand drive car.
Regards, Joerg
Hello Boris,
Once when there was only a Mantis I stuck a piece of wood underneath, with a towel wrapped around it to avoid scratches. That way it made me less dizzy.
Regards, Joerg
Thanks for the replies.
We used two from Meiji at work for doing small coil winding and SMD work. Just the other day I was soldering TSSOP and 0402 parts at 7x magnification.
Adam
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