[Metrology] Mill Spindle Mounted Microscope (aka Cheap Optical Comparator)

[RJSakowski]

Updated program uploaded.

The changes thus far:

• Changeable line colors, can be changed on the fly. Better contrast on some backgrounds.
• Added Bulls Eye Function, up date time is a bit slow, working on it. Only works at 640x480 resolution
• Software movable Cross-hairs via scroll bars

Attached is the updated DC_Microscope2.zip. It is an installer package to install the program on your computer. This has been tested on WinXP, Win 7, and Win 8, installs and works fine. When installing, if it asks you if you want to keep your existing Quartz.dll file, YES, keep your existing file.

I will try to implement anybody's requests, just ask. I'm having fun with this.

Jim, I just came up from playing with the new app. It works great! The only addition that I would want is for it to start the pot of coffee in the morning.

I like the scalable bullseye. I can see using it to find the center of a hole or circular boss. The movable crosshairs make a simple task of centering on the spindle axis. The two pictures are of scribed lines on a piece of aluminum. The aluminum was wet sanded with 2000 grit wet or dry paper. The camera lighting is turned way down to improve contrast, hence the odd color. The camera is set at maximum magnification.

The vertical line is 1.2 thousandths and the horizontal line is .9 thousandths in width. The second picture is taken with the camera rotated 180 deg. The smallest circle is about 1 thousandth in diameter. As you can see, the device is capable of placing the spindle location to a few ten-thousandths of an inch.

Well done!

Bob

 

[Hawkeye]

I got the microscope in the mail today. I just need to learn how to apply it to the shop, and to use the application you supplied, Jim. Thanks for helping us all out.

 

[JimDawson]

Thank you for the kind words and the feedback Bob. I need to get mine mounted up on the mill and play a bit.

 

[RJSakowski]

Thank you for the kind words and the feedback Bob. I need to get mine mounted up on the mill and play a bit.

I think you will enjoy it Jim.

One question, is it possible to have the saved file name increment by one each time a picture is captured? It would save having to open the folder and rename the file before saving another. Windows 7/8 may do this already but XP does not. Thanks for all your work.

Bob

 

[JimDawson]

One question, is it possible to have the saved file name increment by one each time a picture is captured?

Yup, very possible. I'll have to look at an old program I wrote a number of years ago that did exactly that, can't remember exactly how I did it.

Watch this space

 

[JimDawson]

OK, another update. I was going to make an elegant incrementor for the saved pictures, but I went simple and just added a counter to append a number to the file name. When the program is started the counter starts at 0, so move any pictures you want to keep to a new folder before saving new ones. I had to do it this way to maintain compatibility with Win8, I'll see what I can do with this later.

Attached is the updated DC_Microscope3.zip. It is an installer package to install the program on your computer. This has been tested on WinXP, Win 7, and Win 8, installs and works fine. When installing, if it asks you if you want to keep your existing Quartz.dll file, YES, keep your existing file.

Working on the comparitor function.
.

 

[brino]

OK, another update......Attached is the updated DC_Microscope3.zip

Jim,

You are a credit to your species!

But seriously, thanks for giving your time and knowledge in creating a useful tool for the community.
It is very much appreciated!

I finally got an old laptop up and running to dedicated to my microscope and just installed version 2 last night.

-brino

 

[RJSakowski]

Jim,

Another nice-to-have would be to list the coordinates of the crosshairs somewhere and/or to have the ability to save the crosshairs in their last position when closing. This would make centering on restart much easier. If the coordinate were give in pixel position, It would be fairly easy to make some measurements on images.

Ah, feature creep!

Bob

 

[JimDawson]

Jim,

Another nice-to-have would be to list the coordinates of the crosshairs somewhere and/or to have the ability to save the crosshairs in their last position when closing. This would make centering on restart much easier. If the coordinate were give in pixel position, It would be fairly easy to make some measurements on images.

Ah, feature creep!

Bob

I think I can make both of those happen. I'll just save by default and provide a mouse click to re-center in the picture.

Stay tuned for more!

 

[Joe in Oz]

Thanks for the great work Bill!
I'm looking forward to getting the program to work.
I installed the lates version today on Win8.1 (the only OS I have installed at present).
Selecting the camera resulted in an error reporting that Method ~ of Object ~ failed, which then shut the program down.
Restarting and testing all the functions in the menu resulted in the colour changes working fine.
The screen resolution function worked, but reported another error, Error 91, which then shut the program down....
I attached screenshots of both failed options responding with the expected dialogues but failing the error windows.