What	Where
GIT Repository	https://gitlab.com/snowgoonspub/microscope-stand
Thingiverse	https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4625200

USB Microscope Stand⌗

I’ve recently had to confront my life-long denial of Surface Mount Devices when it comes to building my own electrical devices, and accept that I need to deal with it :). That means soldering tiny - a fraction of a grain of rice - components down by hand, something I’m not doing without some kind of visual aid! So, I invested in a super cheap USB microscope - they are easily available under many brand names, but the OEM appears to be ToupTek; An example for sale is here on Amazon.

The scopes themselves do the job pretty well (you get what you pay for, but for tasks like surface-mount soldering, they’re perfectly adequate). But the stand that comes with it is pretty flimsy and not good for much. So I designed a more reliable stand with a built-in focus adjustment.

What does it look like?⌗

According to Blender, it’s supposed to look like this:

Meanwhile, in the real world, this is what it actually looks like:

How can I make one⌗

You’ll find full instructions over on my Git Repo or on Thingiverse, so I won’t post detailed instructions here - I’ll just say that it’s licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license, so if you want one head over to one of the above, download the files and get printing.