I’m genuinly curious: what do you mean by vaporware?

It usually means some software or hardware which is advertised but not available to buy. Here with a few clicks you can find literal printable files, detailed manual on assembly and the software and a scientific paper describing the project. And that is just a quick scan. What makes it vaporware then?

Clearly you can’t buy it, but you can download it right now and start printing it.

I used the terms “appears to” deliberately. There appeared to be no shots of actual output (see other notes on this page), finished builds or builds in progress, and nothing but renders of the product. A little disconcerting. Normally you’d see both on the homepage of a cool project like this one, along with smiling students showing theirs off, etc.

I built one a few months ago for our middle school science lab. It's relatively mature-- a decent mechanical system for the optics, with an OK (simple) optical design, and great build instructions.

The places where it's lacking: the electrical parts for motor drivers are clunky and annoying to build. The software could be a little better. And the transmissive microscopy setup is a bit dodgy.

I've built variants of these years ago for a school. The positioning system works extremely well, especially given the fact that it is 3d-printed; the optics were rather limited, both by lens quality and by the use of the old rasperry pi camera sensor.

I've looked into building a "high resolution optics" version. Most parts [1] are easily sourceable, but the tube lens [2] has proven to be difficult.

It seems half inch diameter, 50mm focal length achromatic doublets are not that common; Thorlabs does seem to be the only source, and are (at least at the moment) not in stock.

[1] https://build.openflexure.org/openflexure-microscope/v6.1.5/...

[2] https://build.openflexure.org/openflexure-microscope/v6.1.5/...

Since you've done the research, I hope you don't mind me asking (I have little to none formal knowledge in optics).

I am trying to build a homemade projector, I was looking for what I think is a 'broadband' (visible light) 'non-polarizing' 50:50 beamsplitter but all the beamsplitters I found are quite expensive. Is there a 'lower quality' hobbyist-grade product range of beamsplitters that you could point me to? (Brands or distributors is also fine)

I'm certainly no expert, my knowledge is limited to what I picked up after a few nights of reading about the microscope.

Does the beamsplitter have to be non-polarizing? My understanding is that standard beamsplitters do the splitting by polarizing the incoming light.

Now that I think of it, you're probably using a standard display as your image source? That does indeed produce polarized light. In that case I would try a (common in photography) circular polarizing filter. Rotate the filter to match the display polarization, after that the light will be circularly polarized. I think you could use that in combination with a "standard" polarizing beamsplitter. Depending on the desired dimensions, there are a few available on aliexpress.

Thanks for the pointers, I had assumed non-polarized was a requirement but indeed didn't consider that display sources are themselves polarized.

Compatible 50mm achromatic doublets are not that common? That part needs a redesign...

Thanks for the firsthand report. It occurs to me that optics have not gone through any of the disruptions that electronics have. It’s still difficult to find good lenses at a student budget price.

you are right, I found the site watching this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TYlQ4urcg8

- this is the microscope from the link. OpenFlexure Delta Stage 3D Printed Microscope: Hunting for Tardigrades

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eATcGuTz6To

- And I really liked this DIY

https://www.instructables.com/Low-cost-Fluorescence-and-Brig...

Some more images here: https://gitlab.com/openflexure/gallery-wiki#galleries

And someone used the Openflexure delta stage to make a scanning laser microscope recently (and made an entertaining video about it): https://old.reddit.com/r/microscopy/comments/mvmznq/i_made_a...