SEM For Science

I’m just going to drop this right here:

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I have a contact that does SEM maintenance and upkeep. If you guys are serious about buying one, he’s a pretty good guy and I might be able help negotiate some maintenance contract and or a machine purchase (he re-sells sometimes if something falls in his lap).

What might the sale price be for something like this?

I doubt the Science Committee dreamt this big, but a makerspace with one is something to brag about.

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Brand new? A couple $100k. A 1980s one that’s been refurbed and maybe upgraded and is now being re-sold? A lot cheaper, something in the $5k - $50k range depending on the level of computer control you want as well as how much maintenance we could do on it ourselves.

Essentially the design of them is a “reverse” CRT. So if you don’t need computer control, or any digitizing, then a 80’s model scope gets you 99% of the new scopes feature set.

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I see total shit ones for $1k to $4k ones that function well. Then it’s the bells and whistles that start adding $10k per feature.

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My high school had a electron microscope, We only ever used it for one class, once a semester. I feel the DMS one would get even less use.

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I should have mentioned that I was half joking. But weirder things have happened.

Who knows … the Photography SIG might be more interested in this than science …

Then again, isn’t @NightRanger’s thesis on carbon nanotubes?

It would be interesting to do some metallurgy. Do you think you can see metal grain?

We are dead serious about buying one! Obviously not very soon though…

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Well the auction doesn’t end for three whole days and that’s an eternity in some scopes.

In all seriousness though, I’ll volunteer to help set it up, get it working, figure out how to use it, and train others.

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Alright, send me a an email to my username at gmail, and I’ll set up a contact with the guy. You can at least get some pricing ideas from him, and maybe if your budget lines up have him “be on the watch” for one for DMS.

From the electronics side of things, I can help with debugging and troubleshooting issues if we want to buy one in need of repair.

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really? That would be amazing! Thank you.

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email sent to both of you.

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A SEM at DMS would be amazing and make all other makerspaces “cute and adorable” by comparison.

@darrent
These are some zoomed outed images of carbon nanotube scaffolds on which I grew embryonic stem cells. The images are meant to convey the roughness and porosity of the substrates more than the shapes of the individual nanotubes.

@Draco this is from metallurgist.com used to demonstrate intergranular fracture.
image

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A couple of many knife edge pics from here.

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Cannot forget about the T&A in STEAM :wink: