Posted by
Guy Cox-2 on
URL: http://confocal-microscopy-list.275.s1.nabble.com/Olympus-ZDC-2-vs-Nikon-PFS-tp6370076p6560947.html
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Slate makes a good top and you can often get a cheap slab by going to a billiard table manufacturer and getting a reject piece. (A table has 3 pieces which are carefully matched, so if one gets chipped or broken the other two are going begging). It has a beautifully smooth surface and needs no covering. The slow-combustion wood stove which heats the room where I'm writing this stands on just such a piece. (No, I'm not in the university right now!)
Guy
Optical Imaging Techniques in Cell Biology
by Guy Cox CRC Press / Taylor & Francis
http://www.guycox.com/optical.htm______________________________________________
Associate Professor Guy Cox, MA, DPhil(Oxon)
Australian Centre for Microscopy & Microanalysis,
Madsen Building F09, University of Sydney, NSW 2006
Phone +61 2 9351 3176 Fax +61 2 9351 7682
Mobile 0413 281 861
______________________________________________
http://www.guycox.net
-----Original Message-----
From: Confocal Microscopy List [mailto:
[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Keith Morris
Sent: Thursday, 7 July 2011 11:48 PM
To:
[hidden email]
Subject: Re: Cheap Antivibration table
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Back at UCL, we manufactured our own 'anti-vibration' microscope tables we
used Fabreeka anti-vibration rubber pads [square air indents in a thick
rubber sheet] rather than squash balls or a bicycle inner tube as others
have found when you get a puncture or a squash ball finally pops it's a pain
diss-assembling it all - Fabcel pads never need pumping up and retain their
shape under load [a flat sheet]. I added a very heavily weighted slab on the
top of the pads - I was hoping for granite but the cost [from a kitchen
worktop supplier] was quite high including delivery in London so our
workshop made a large and very heavy [something like 21" x 18" x 1"] slab of
machined steel which they covered with black Fablon [sticky back plastic] to
make it look a bit less naff. The steel slab did ring like a bell when hit
with anything metal [not good] but it's shear mass, coupled with the Fabcel
pads, actually worked quite well [i.e. the vibrational energy couldn't
bounce a slab of that weight up and down much]. Quite importantly we had the
absolutely rubbish bench worktop underneath the microscopes re-inforced with
extra legs so that it no longer wobbled when you tapped on it.
Fabcel pads
http://docs-europe.electrocomponents.com/webdocs/0030/0900766b80030073.pdfhttp://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/anti-vibration-mounts/3660150The fabcel pads were a bit weird [ours were all coated with like a sticky
silicon - but at least no surface dust problems]. Fabreeka do mentioned
using Fabcel pads for 'microscopes' [Fabcel 25 recommended, although I think
we used the thicker Fabcel 50 variety as our metal slab was heavy - I can
check that]. We cut them into smaller squares as ours were the 18"x18" pads
[to about 4" square from memory, four near the outside corners, tucked in
out of view, and one in the middle] and we put 2 pads thickness under the
slab, which worked well. It all cost about £600 including workshop time and
the £80 reinforcement under-bench box-steel legs+feet [would have been twice
that with our granite supplier] - most of that cost was the machined mild
steel slab. We stuck a thin ribbed rubber mat material onto the top of
Fablon coated slab to give a tougher top surface for the microscope to rest
on. From memory We used the lighter load Fabcel 50 pads and stuck the two
4"x 4"ish square pads together by double sided tape after trying to remove a
bit of the Fabcel's sticky 'silicon' coating. You might be able to get
machined granite/marble or black slate slabs cheaper than I could - and some
use cheap concrete slabs but I thought that bit tacky and dust prone.
Anyway it worked for us - tapping the worktop next to the microscope no
longer 'wobbled' the field in view and the door slamming in the corridor
outside no longer caused similar problems. Our two microscopes [Zeiss
Axiovert 100's with 10x air to 63x oil objectives] were on the 4th floor by
a busy London road. All our other microscopes came expensive with air tables
[confocals] or similar manufacturer supplied damping plates [Zeiss/PALM].
Regards
Keith
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr Keith J. Morris,
Molecular Cytogenetics and Microscopy Core,
Laboratory 00/069 and 00/070,
The Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics,
Roosevelt Drive,
Oxford OX3 7BN,
United Kingdom.
Telephone: +44 (0)1865 287568
Email:
[hidden email]
Web-pages:
http://www.well.ox.ac.uk/molecular-cytogenetics-and-microscopy-----Original Message-----
From: Confocal Microscopy List [mailto:
[hidden email]] On
Behalf Of Jeremy Adler
Sent: 07 July 2011 10:23
To:
[hidden email]
Subject: Cheap Antivibration table
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Has anyone every constructed a DIY air table by placing a bicycle
inner tube under a baseplate. It seems like a very simple and cheap
solution.
Would it be worthwhile to use a stack of two inner tubes and
baseplates, with the inner tubes inflated to different pressures ?
Any advice and alternative suggestions would be appreciated.
Jeremy Adler
IGP
Rudbeckslaboratoriet
Daghammersköljdsväg 20
751 85 Uppsala
Sweden
0046 (0)18 471 4607
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