AO Series 20 -- needs lamp housing
I purchased this AO microscope on eBay. I paid a pretty low price and mainly wanted the phase viewer (not in this pic). It also had a trinocular head, one objective, and a filter holder.
Now that I have it, I thought I'd try to get the stand working. All the grease was very gummed up so I disassembled it and cleaned and lubed. I think it might be salvageable. It has 7 of the base filter disks; I think only missing the green one.
The picture below is of two extras. The Cat 1245 phase aperature viewing unit on the right is the main thing I wanted. It also had the Cat 1114 analyzer turret unit, on the left, which has - 1 polaroid filter, 2 empty aperatures.
Picture below is the trinocular head that came with it. The adjustable parts of it are very sticky, so I will need to disassemble and clean/lube if I wan to use it.
I have a working Series 10 Phase scope with Cat 1240 Phase turret condenser that has the normal 4 annuli. So I can move parts to this incomplete Series 20 to test it. The main problem is the big missing part on the 20.
This AO Series 20 needs a lamp housing
Here is a picture of the rear, showing where the lamp housing should attach. It also shows the lamp condenser lens which is adjustable with the knob to its left in the picture. The next two pictures show this condensor lens at its full retracted and extended positions.
The picture below is from the Series 20 Reference manual. It shows the lamp housing on the microscope. The guy is aligning the lamp holder with the optical path.
The picture below, from the manual, shows the lamp holder removed. The lamp is (I think) a two pin, 12 V, 100W halogen bulb. From this and the parts diagrams, I think the only "optical" element in the housing that I am missing, is the diffusing glass. So, I am hoping that I can make my own housing that uses either a halogen bulb or an ultrabrite LED.
If someone could help with measurements, the key information for me would be determining the distance that the lamp filament is behind the flat surface at the rear of the microscope base. The approximate dimensions of the bulb itself migh help too.
For more details, the following pictures show parts diagrams from the Series 20 manual.
