LEGO is truly a source of joy for adults, allowing them to unleash their imagination by building their favorite houses and structures. It also facilitates the creation of precision instruments, making it a favorite among countless geeks!
Previously, we reported on someone who built a parts sorting machine with LEGO, eliminating the hassle of classifying LEGO pieces. This time, we discovered a LEGO enthusiast, Yuksel Temiz, a researcher at IBM Zurich, who DIY-ed a high-precision electric microscope using LEGO, Arduino (an open-source electronics prototyping platform), and Raspberry Pi (a credit card-sized computer) to capture microfluidic chips from various angles!
This is truly a case of balancing work and hobby, which is admirable. Netizens commented: “Even if I see it, I won’t know how to do it, and if I try, it will be a failure.”
Yuksel’s choice to DIY the microscope was not a spur-of-the-moment decision.
On one hand, IBM Zurich has a tradition of developing microscopes. In 1981, Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer invented the scanning tunneling microscope here.
As a DIY enthusiast, Yuksel naturally wanted to follow in the footsteps of his research institute’s tradition and aimed to create a modular electric microscope worth $300.
Moreover, Yuksel needed a custom microscope for his research, as capturing images of microfluidic chips was extremely difficult!
One person creates, saving the entire team: This microscope works better than the purchased ones!
Because the chips are generally large, standard microscopes cannot capture the entire image. However, Yuksel’s research group needs a standard microscope to resolve fine features that ordinary cameras cannot detect.
Yuksel also studied papers from other research groups, and it was clear that everyone faced this challenge: a need for a more precise instrument capable of capturing chips from multiple angles.
With this goal in mind, Yuksel took some of his free time to redesign a multifunctional laboratory instrument that could capture macro photos from almost any angle.
Illustration: James Provost
The design of the imaging microscope utilized a lot of technology and materials, including LEGO for the main structural components and 3D-printed gears and frames to drive its moving parts. The precise movement is powered by stepper motors driven by a motor driver board and controlled by an Arduino board. The Raspberry Pi Zero and Pi camera module are used for image capture.
The initial design included custom control boards and parts printed on a high-resolution printer, but before public release, the microscope was redesigned to be assembled using off-the-shelf boards and parts that could be printed on lower-cost, low-resolution printers.
Yuksel’s first prototype was a Raspberry Pi camera module mounted on a platform that could move in 3D space using a linear stepper motor from an old CD drive. The Raspberry Pi camera was an ideal choice since it allows manual adjustment of key parameters like ISO settings and exposure time.
A behind-the-scenes look at the production process, finding the best shooting angle after repeated adjustments!
IEEE Spectrum wrote about Yuksel’s iterative tuning process during the production.
Yuksel first carefully removed the plastic casing that held the lens, exposing the CMOS image sensor, and designed a delicate mechanism to move the lens back and forth, allowing for high-magnification macro photos. This device worked well for a time, but it was fragile. Yuksel accidentally broke the lens mechanism a few times and caused damage to the image sensor by exceeding the movement limits.
He then decided to take another approach: completely removing the lens from the Pi camera; then, taking the objective lens from a low-cost USB microscope and mounting it on another CD linear drive, allowing the objective lens to move back and forth along the optical axis of the Pi camera; and finally creating a protective housing for the exposed sensor using LEGO.
However, the result of this attempt was that, apart from the high price of the linear module used in the microscope, there were no results. The travel distance of the CD drive was too short, still failing to achieve a wide range of magnification.
Subsequently, Yuksel switched to a lead screw mechanism used in 3D printers. He did not use the commonly used 8mm diameter screws, shafts, and bearings, but instead used 3mm diameter parts to ensure the compactness of the device. Additionally, moving the objective lens caused issues with stray light, so he decided to replace it with a moving camera sensor.
He built a platform that allowed the object to move and rotate along the x-axis and y-axis. Ultimately, six mini stepper motors with gearboxes were used to move the platform, tilt the microscope, adjust its distance from the object, and focus the image.
Illustration: James Provost
The angle is perfect!
Because chips are usually made of highly reflective or transparent materials, providing uniform lighting for the chips is also crucial.
The LEGO microscope can place the sample under uniform illumination provided by an LED backlight module. The sample can move forward and backward, side to side, and can also be rotated to find the desired angle. The body of the microscope can tilt up and down and adjust its distance and focus relative to the sample to provide different levels of magnification [bottom]. By moving the lensless camera module within the LEGO housing, the focus can be adjusted by changing the distance to the bottom of the housing.
Yuksel stated that he often designs his own Arduino control boards for compact devices. This time, he designed a control board measuring 18×18 mm, using an ATtiny84 microcontroller and DRV8834 stepper motor driver. The image quality under this configuration is surprisingly good, allowing for beautiful images of chips and checking micron-level features, even serving as a digital goniometer to measure contact angles.
Initially, this project was for a specific need, but Yuksel clearly realized that it could be a multifunctional photography system that anyone could assemble and use at home or school.
Open-source assembly instructions, hoping DIY enthusiasts can enjoy the joy of creation
Yuksel’s leaders at IBM supported him in making the assembly instructions public, which is truly charitable. With just LEGO, a 3D printer, and a Raspberry Pi, one can create a microscope for scientific research, saving a significant amount of research funding.
However, when he began preparing the instructions, he was troubled by several issues.
He built the device using a state-of-the-art 3D printer and a fully equipped mechanical workshop. Moreover, the small stepper motors used were expensive and not readily available in general hobby electronics stores. Programming the ATtiny84 with a dedicated ISP programmer is certainly not as easy as programming a commercial Arduino control board with a USB interface.
Therefore, Yuksel returned to the drawing board and redesigned everything using readily available components, such as using Adafruit’s Arduino control boards and stepper motor drivers, as well as the 28BYJ-48 stepper motor, which can be found for just a few dollars anywhere. He also replaced the LED matrix light source with a more easily homemade and lower-cost version.
Later, he bought an LED backlight module from Adafruit for $3, along with a high-power LED. The intensity is slightly lower than the original LED matrix, but for both reflective and transmissive microscopes, the uniformity is still quite good. For the new linear actuator, Yuksel combined LEGO’s “sliding” parts with a rack and pinion mechanism designed using FreeCAD’s gear toolbox and printed it with his personal Creality Ender 3 printer. The new design performed just as well as the previous one, if not better.
The instructions have been posted on GitHub, and interested students can go take a look~
This device may still have many areas for improvement, and Yuksel hopes this prototype can inspire other makers to try new and better ideas.
So, can it replace laboratory microscopes? Perhaps not, but this microscope provides a great solution for schools with limited funding, which is why the assembly instructions are open-source, as he hopes to make it easily accessible and enjoyable for everyone.