My photomacrography stand initially used the Olympus Auto Bellows, except for the bellows rail. The gray cast iron, double dovetail sided bellows rail for my stand is somewhat longer than the Olympus aluminum rail and held at both ends in sliders. These sliders mate with the guiding surfaces of the lathe bed vertical column for coarse adjustment of the bellows rail position using the long feed screw shown in Figure 7. These sliders are locked to the lathe bed before the adjustment for final focus is made with the micrometer head at the end of the bellows rail. The bellows rail dovetail and mating surfaces of the sliders were hand scraped for a very precise fit and alignment with the lathe bed axis. The all-metal camera and lens mounting boards shown in Figure 7, replaced the earlier Olympus components to provide much higher rigidity, and to eliminate the crack prone plastic inserts mating with the bellows rail in the Olympus system. The X-Y feed slides from the lathe are shown attached to a jackscrew driven knee slide in Figure 8. This slide provides the vertical feed for scanning when motor driven. The cast iron slide for the knee, made in my home shop, was precision hand scraped and fitted with a tapered gib for maximum rigidity. The dial indicator shown in Figure 8 is used to determine when to open and close the camera shutter.  In order to assure the slide is moving at a uniform speed upward, I allow an initial 0.100” of scan travel before reaching the position where the shutter is opened with a cable release.  An adjustable micro switch shuts off the scanning drive motor if it is not first switched off based upon the dial indicator reading for the end of the scan. The jackscrew, 0.025” elevation per screw revolution, is driven through a 20:1 gear reduction box salvaged from an electric drill. A 0.1 HP AC-DC motor with a belt reduction is used to drive the gear box through a flexible shaft. The motor speed is governed by a variable speed controller. The scanning exposure is controlled by suitable combinations of scanning speed and slit illumination intensity. 

click image to enlarge (114K) Figure 7

click image to enlarge (145K) Figure 8

The illumination system described in my earlier article is shown in Figure 9 configured to scan the head of a fly, shown in Figure 6. Figure 10 is a close-up showing the fly between the illuminating lenses. The blue cables at the sides of the Figure 9 are portions of a bifurcated fiber-optic light-guide connected to adjustable sliders containing the slits.  The ends of the light-guides are linear fiber arrays measuring 0.50 mm x 14 mm. These light-guide ends are positioned 6 mm behind the 10 mm long by 0.025 mm slit openings formed between two razor blade segments. The inner two sliders contain Spiratone macro lenses with a 35 mm focal length. Color balancing 80A filters are mounted in caps on the outer ends of these lenses. The system is configured to produce a 5 mm wide beam at 0.5X magnification of the slit sources to illuminate the fly head for the image in Figure 6 obtained with the Olympus 38 mm focal length macro lens set at f/4 with the bellows length set for 5X magnification. The illuminating lenses are set at f/4 giving an illumination NA of 80% of the imaging numerical aperture (NA). The numerical apertures are calculated from the following equation using magnification M_i = 2X for the cone of light illuminating the specimen. The lens relative aperture setting (f/no) is the focal length of the lens divided by twice the lens opening diameter.

click image to enlarge (252K) Figure 9

click image to enlarge (204K) Figure 10

Eyepiece inspection of the portions of the field illuminated by the slit system revealed objectionable diffraction artifacts when the illumination NA was reduced much below that of the imaging NA. This same condition applies to brightfield illumination with the light microscope. 

The sliders containing the slit sources and the lenses mount on a 610 mm long dovetail slide obtained from Edmund Industrial Optics. These sliders incorporate vertical dovetail mounts permitting the lenses and slits to be adjusted vertically for beam alignment. The aligning operation begins by rotating the caps containing the slits on the mating tubes containing the fiber-optic linear arrays until an image of the slit formed by the adjacent macro lens exhibits a full length image of the slit with uniform brightness. These angular positions are then locked with the thumb screws in the caps.   The next operation is to align the slits so they are the same distance above the stage and parallel to the stage. A right angle monocular microscope with a 5X objective and 15X graticule eyepiece was fabricated for this operation shown being done in Figure 11. The next operation is to align the illumination lenses so that both beams are coaxial. The slit sources are moved to near the opposite ends of the horizontal slide for this operation with one of the illumination lenses removed from its mount. The remaining lens is then used to form the image of the adjacent slit on the end of the cap containing the other slit. The illuminating lens is then adjusted up or down until the image of the illuminated slit is centered relative to the opposite slit. The other illuminating lens is then installed for the final part of the aligning operation shown in Figure 12.  The bellows lens with the 10X viewing eyepiece is used to center and focus the slit images at one of the sharp edges of an aluminum pyramid test target.The right angle microscope is also used for this operation as an aid for establishing precise focus of both slits on the pyramid edge. The illumination lens not previously aligned vertically is then adjusted vertically so that both slit images are exactly coincident on the edge of the pyramid when viewed with the right angle microscope.

click image to enlarge (182K) Figure 11

click image to enlarge (189K) Figure 12