The actual project I wanted to do was attach my Nikon D90 SLR to my Lomo Biolam microscope. However, I had to detour into fixing the microscope first, as described here.
Once I had that working, the actual adapter was pretty simple. I started off using a toilet roll tube and some masking tape as a prototype to check it worked at all:
Right: Mixed Foraminifera taken with toilet roll prototype
Next, I hit up Fusion 360 for a few hours, and ended up with the following:
The Biolam side was pretty easy to design: its basically an angled groove, easily measured with my digital calipers.
The Nikon side took a few goes: as you can see above you need some overlapping plastic to lock it into the DSLR body. Getting it just right so it fitted, but also didn’t rip the plastic off took a few attempts. I was printing just a few mm above the Nikon adapter to avoid wastage each time. Eventually I ended up with this printout.
(Note: Since I’m using Simplify3D, I was able to easily adjust the infill percentage to be much higher for the connecting ends to save on filament)
I’m pretty pleased with the results! Its a happy combination of 1977 USSR and 2009 Japanese technology 🙂
(Clockwise: Volvox with daughter colonies, Angiospermae Urtica – T. S. Leaf Stinging Hairs, Mixed Radiolaria, all 20X).
I remembered my camera can take video as well!
(Video of Angiospermae Urtica – T. S. Leaf Stinging Hairs at 40X)
So I don’t forget, the fiddly ffmpeg command to convert the above AVI->GIF and retain quality from here: ffmpeg -i DSC_0099.AVI -vf "fps=10,scale=720:-1:flags=lanczos,split[s0][s1];[s0]palettegen[p];[s1][p]paletteuse" -ss 2 video.gif
I’ve uploaded the designs to Thingiverse.
adq 