I worked for JEOL for 7 years as a field service engineer. I'm super impressed with what you've accomplished. As far as I can tell, you've done everything right. I'm surprised that pump failed, those things are bulletproof. They used them for decades and this is the first bad one I've seen. The image shifting issue looks like it's an issue with the CRT, or maybe it's driving circuit. It seems to only be on the bottom of the screen and is mag independent. The only things that could cause the image to dance around like that are the CRT or the beam scanning system, which would be effected by mag and the image shift (that is what the joystick is for if I recall). EMI can cause that too, but it would be everywhere not just the bottom. Keep up the great work.
Regarding the pump: i suspect that if i was more careful, i could find the issue and fix it, but unfortunately this pump is very difficult to troubleshoot because of it's odd design. Regarding the CRT: yeah it does seem like there is an issue with the driving circuit. seems like the whole screen stretches and shrinks at a time. i'll try replacing the caps and stuff first.
@projectsinflight I'm sure I don't have to say this, but be sure everything is discharged before you mess with the CRT or anything in its circuit. I actually got bit from a CRT I thought was discharged when I was converting an old SEM to LCD. I would probably try to clean up the image capture signal chain before fixing the CRT. Especially since the image output could be convenient for videos. You could probably just turn the beam off and poke around with an O scope. Then any signal you see is just noise. It's likely a bad connection or a ground. Possibly noise on the reference voltage of the ADC. I've never messed with one of those systems, so I'm just guessing. Good luck.
It's really cool that you got this dinosaur working even if not yet perfect. Finding things you want to examine with it may take a little time. I once saw an image of a coin that had an added mintmark. The microscope made it obvious that the mintmark was added.
After all those years, replacing all the crt capacitors is a must. Do you know what are the video signal specifications, a big non green screen is a nice upgrade
Performing a repair on any machine with *this many parts* nonfunctional or degraded is incredible. Troubleshooting gets exponentially harder with the number of failures, and I'm shocked you got anywhere. Kudos.
@@RowanHawkins There are some variances in the schematics for the JSM5200 depending on what year it was made, but they are largely the same. The issue at hand is whether or not it is legal to post schematics like this publicly. I suspect JEOL wouldn't care since it is a 40 year old design, but I suspect it is still not legal.
As a low-level professional industry mechanic. I remember long days of really trying to fix something that had multiple problems. You go over it 100 times in your head. Going home and still thinking about it. Then get a new idea (sometimes in dreams) and then try it, only to see it didn't work. But the beauty of it is that sometimes it's fixable, and the thrill you get from seeing it working again. Your work in this video really captures that journey. Thank you for sharing it (❤ 10 µm in size)
Bypass the monitor to pc circuit and use real 75 ohm cable, that will improve the signal a lot. Also use an external monitor to check for errors in the old monitor.
@@mactep1 The images he managed to capture from it are stunning and they do not seem to suffer from interference at all. The signal to noise ratio is way better because of the scanning method that gets adjusted by the program, very neat!
There is another comment thread from a tech that used to fix these machines that points out that although it looks like that machine is generating a standard video signal, in fact the signal syncs directly to the electron beam. When the PC interface takes over the crt apparently goes garbled.
what's crazy is that there are definitely other microscopes that have come and gone that are probably as good or better. usually a lot larger though...
@@projectsinflight I am so, so, so envious. Congrats and tons of respect for getting it working again. And please keep up the long-form videos! I love the, "yeah, not buying it, buuut if you're ever tired of the hassle...", line; I am usually not one to be embarrassed or afraid to ask, but I guess it just hadn't occurred to me that, despite the seller possibly asking for thousands, it may end up rotting for so long that they actually take you up on that. Had you been actively monitoring Craigslist or was this a pure chance thing? Also, is that SEM Hackers Discord a public one? I've been hoping to do the same; I went down the rabbit hole of "reproducible" builds during a university project, which eventually led me to bootstrapping the entire system from "baremetal", and now I am at the stage of insanity where I am genuinely trying to ghetto DIY lithography.
The resolution on those last images you showed of the fly were utterly amazing. It's so crazy that this majestic, brilliantly designed machine came very close to being scrapped.
I am so glad that the algorithm sent your video my way. What an adventure. Congratulations on your persistence and diligence in troubleshooting and fixing this amazing machine.
word of warning, be careful with the window of the EDX (Energy Dispersive X-Ray spectrometer) window. Its only a few micrometers thick and usually made of either beryllium or a polymer (such as formvar). This window isolates the vacuum in the detector and Dewar from that of the SEM in order to allow sample changes without turning the detector into an Icicle. You will also likely need to recalibrate the detector when you first use it, haven't used that model in a while but in general, you put in a pure piece of copper, polished if possible, normal to the beam, then use the K and L peaks to set gain and offset. Also, the cathode in that model of SEM should last between 20 and 200 hours. its a Type K cathode if i recall correctly. Congrats on the microscopes first light. Also, if you haven't been told yet, keep the electron gun and its components spotlessly clean. Use a very weak abrasive slurry and cotton to polish the parts. There are various compounds that are suited and many that aren't. There is a Scouring agent in Germany made by Sidol which i recommend to new users, as its difficult to fubar a Wehnelt or anode with it, but it takes a bit longer to clean then using diamond or aluminum oxide polishing compounds. Basically, you need to be able to get everything off the Wehnelt and anode and keep the gun exceptionally clean.
@@bashkillszombies As long as the parts are not bulk Aluminium or chrome plated, toothpaste can work, though some have additives that will contaminate the vacuum of the gun, the simplest toothpaste with the least amount of additives is ok in a pinch, but i would not recommend it. As for Colgate regular, i took a quick look at the MSDS and its not great but its not going to destroy a microscope, assuming of course that its a normal tungsten hairpin type, a LaB6 or Field Exmission machine would be adversely affected if not cleaned perfectly. If the parts are chrome plated they will have that plating abraded rather quickly, if they are aluminum, you will leave micro scratches due to the abrasive being too hard. Basically, if the parts that where cleaned with toothpaste are washed twice in distilled water, at around 60°C to 80°C in an ultrasonic cleaner (take care to not use glass or metal surfaces to place the parts on, and always place them on a section of the part not exposed to the electric field of the gun. Exceptions apply, basically put don't scratch it by cleaning) then cleaned with acetone fallowed by absolute ethanol or isopropanol, you should be fine. You could also boil the parts in destined water if you don't want to risk using the ultrasonic cleaner.
Also, you can blow that window on the EDS if you vent too fast. That is why there should be some sort of needle valve on the vent line. We used Pol or Wenol polish with a cotton swab, then wipe clean. Then sonicate in alcohol then acetone for 10 minutes each. Use gloves the whole time and use the wooden stick of the cotton swab to get the wenalt (the cone part with the hole in it that covers the filament) out of the acetone. Blow it off immediately with canned air or a air bulb. If you use canned air, blow a puff away from the wenalt first in case some accelerant comes out from the can being moved.
The repair is incredibly impressive. Your problem-solving skills come in full-force yet again. My favorite part, while a bit mundane, was the replacing of the old transformer and voltage regulators.
I was thinking to bypass the faulty secondary and replace the needed output with just one additional transformer. However, perhaps the aging original transformer would just keep decaying and produce more failed secondaries.
@@thecasualcitizen492 unfortunatly, when one secondary fails it shorts out the whole transformer. Even with nothing connected, the primary side acts as a short at 60Hz AC
My grandfather was one of JEOL's senior technicians and from the dates I saw on the PCBs he may of installed / serviced it before he retired in 1994 sadly, he passed in 2008. I got the opportunity to read through some of those documents/schematics in those blue binders which was thr companys colors, although at the time I was too young to understand and still learning electronics though he always highlighted and cautioned about the high voltages those machines operate at. Great job if you find anything indicating HJL Sr. And/or Harold Jay Leeper Sr. was part of its installation and/or service know someone who really cared a about those microscopes put quality time into making sure it operated as one of the best instrument for its time. BTW Great job on the resurrection!
If you ever need a complex part machined for this SEM project, please DM me! I own a small 1 man, 5 axic cnc machine shop and I would love to help out this or any other similary cool projects.
Thank you! That is really generous. I definitely have at least one thing I need to make for it soon! feel free to email me (channel name + gmail) if you'd like
@@projectsinflight might want to check with Martin and any other owners you've run across before remaking a part: this is definitely where you want that cross reference, and it's also the best opportunity to make multiples of anything that's likely to need replacement again. I'd bet you can find some electronics and microcontroller content creators that would love to collab on updating any of those 30 year old guts too.
So cool! I'm no expert by any means, but I have experience with repairing electronics. Replacing old electrolytic capacitors usually solves a lot of noise problems. Especially any located in amplification circuits. Might not be the issue here, but it's cheap insurance and should prevent any old caps from damaging anything. I can't wait to see more of this!
@AKAtheA I just recently recapped an older analog device, and it took 100 capacitors. It was 46$ from digikey +8$ for shipping, using mostly nichicon caps (good quality). He doesn't need to go with custom vishay precision caps.
I once found a freight scale that was built 1900 that had been crushed by a forklift. I found no info about it anywhere but after 3 months of tinkering I got it working. In equal parts I feel humbled in my accomplishment yet share the feeling of victory in yours. Such a daunting task feels defeating until the end. Truly inspirational man Thank you for sharing.
This is INCREDIBLY cool. Not just the repair itself, but also the fact that there is actually a 'repair-your-electron-microscope-at-home community' out there.
@@projectsinflight UA-cam decided to grace my feed with your presence, and I couldn't be happier! I absolutely love long repair videos made about super technical lab equipment. Keep it coming.
Wow, this is (to me) the coolest "will it start" in YT land. Electron microscope… Let that sink in. Years ago I found sem pictures (real photos) when the university hired us to get out some trash. I thought this was too cool so I stole a bunch of them. They show plant cells in the 25 µm range. My favourites would be the Trini…kaboom glass and chips graffity. So cool You pulled this off- nerd. Inspiring. Gives me motivation to get thru my own stuff. I collect old electronics and am trying to learn how to fix them -by doing. Today I fixed an ac milivolt-meter. It seemed like something was shaky and I re soldered the main board with lead solder. I only use lead solder, it flows with less heat and looks pretty. And I have such a de soldering gun- a cheap chinesium but it works. Sometimes it clogs up tho- I still figure it out. And I rebuilt the switching for the vacuum pump, the old way it lagged. But still: get Yourself a ZD-915 desoldering gun. It´s entry level but good enough. I wouldn´t have started the repair today if I only had wick. I digress… Still: a very impressive thing to have, that Sem. Kind Regards
@@projectsinflight Thanks- It´s the cheapest model on the market with acceptable parts availability. The Hakko can´t do anything better, it´s just more expensive. Give the Hakko a run for its money. Desolder all and everything in one go- does it clog? Run it above 320C for leadfree, at 290C for lead solder. Mine does clog and it´s annoying. If it does I heat it up to its max until it can suck itself free. I modded mine with a relay for the pump (before all the power went thru the handpiece) and a buck converter for the annoying fan. But that´s it- I just re did a voltmeter mainboard in chase of a shaky connection (found it). I never would have done that with solder wick… Thank You again, glad I could help. I´m still at awstruck over Your project. That´s the good stuff…
I've always wondered if SEM/STEM would benefit from some of the same algorithms used in astrophotography. With AP we usually have to take many long exposures, then combine them in software to get a SNR that's remotely decent. It gets even more complicated when you use filters and a monochrome camera. Also, the software usually has functionality to align the images based on the detected stars in the image, and the more advanced algorithms can even stretch and squish your images to account for things like sensor tilt, optical distortions, etc. That part would be more difficult with SEM images, but it's certainly doable, and you don't have the problem of a moving target. Since you're only scanning at one beam energy level at a time, I wonder if it'd be possible (or even sensible) to take the same image at different beam energies, then treat those like RGB channels. These are just idle thoughts, I doubt they're very original and likely other people have already attempted it, but it's the sort of thing I'm interested in.
Considering that a SEM image is still nothing more than a Matrix of intensities, it is generally possible to apply all the same CV algorithms for things like feature detection, stitching or similar. It should be noted, though, that stuff like calculating homographies (e.g. for panorama stitching) gets harder, the smaller the imaged area is, obviously. So if you go with a higher magnification, many algorithms need to be more sophisticated. Would be an interesting project to implement a bit of CV sugar with the SEM!
Interesting idea... I suspect that it would be useful to overlay different images, but only at the same beam energy. I do not know if it would be useful to do it at different beam energies. The reason is that at different beam energies, the amount of surface detail actually changes, and so at lower kV you see more detail, but have more chromatic aberrations in the lens. so you'd be trying to overlay different but equally valid images. It's a really intriguing idea and kinda makes my brain hurt thinking about exactly how you'd go about solving that one. I should definitely look this one up to see if others have tried
@projectsinflight I'd be willing to spend some time messing with it if I had some of your images. I've been tinkering with some of the Python libraries out there for this sort of thing for astro so I can build my own software for automatically importing, organizing, calibrating, and doing a "first pass" processing before I bring it into tools I know are beyond my skill to replicate. I'd have to put together a plan of what to capture to be truly able to tell if it improves image quality, but I also wouldn't be surprised if better software already exists. SEM image processing isn't exactly something I've come across in my career as a software developer. It'd also be a lot of work on your end to capture a bunch of different exposures, and you may be happy with the quality you already have. Astrophotography is a masochistic hobby so I wouldn't mind doing it, but that's not universally considered fun.
Quite a lot of the algorithms for SNR increase used in astrophotography are already used in modern EMs. There are even more advanced techniques avalible for electron microscopes when compared to astrophotography. At lest compared to advanced amature astrophotography.
Almost 50 years ago there was an article in Scientific American on how to build a rudimentary SEM with off the shelf components. I was captivated by it and always wanted to act on it down the road but never got around to it. So glad you were able to realize your dreams with this instrument. Power supplies are usually the first point of failure in electronic devices. So glad you were able to work around those issues, as well as the vacuum ones.
Awesome stuff! I've worked in field service in EM for 10 years and I learned a couple things. I rarely get to see these older systems and I love to see them get a second (or third) life! Please be careful with radiation, it's a unseen danger working with these systems especially with modifications that may or may not have been communicated over time. Seemingly innocent things like a modified pressure gauge can be an ideal escape route for x-rays.
As an retired manufacturing Engineer in semi conductors , I loved every second of this video. I worked with E M technician only one time , these machines are awesome. You have the bestest toys. My toys are woodworking tools and cameras these days. Thank you from California.
Heya, awesome project! The old computer probably still has a harddrive in it (spinning rust), which tends to significantly degrade over time. I'd highly recommend to make a backup and/or transfer the drive onto a modern disk/SSD
good news, i have imaged the disk! though i'd really like to replace the computer with a more modern one or make my own capture device. this thing is really clunky lol
@@projectsinflight I'd recommend that you capture the disk image, convert to a VMDK/virtual disk, and then run the computer using a virtual machine. Physical to virtual isn't that challenging, but i am VCP/VCAP certified engineer though. My brother has a CNC system that had an old legacy PC and single point of failure. Once virtualizing it, the hardware can fail and it's a quick and easy process to have it working again. Can even turn it into a high availability solution. His only SPOF today on the control side is the software requires a USB hardware dongle key to operate.
@@dohabandit You can't just do this, these sorts of machines have an accessory card (often multiple) connected into the motherboard that receives the data from the SEM, and special drivers that handle this. For this vintage, I highly doubt it is PCIe or something simple like that as well.
Pretty cool to see that an SEM is basically not much more than an old-fashioned analog CRT camera tube where you can stick a sample into. So most of the repair techniques from analog televisons apply here -- the lack of vertical stability is probably due to capacitors in the deflection circuits.
Took my first SEM images on a JEOL JSM-T330A (circa 1985 IIRC) and from that moment on I was hooked. Went to work for several years in a microscopy lab with a variety of different brands of SEMs - Hitachi, FEI/ThermoFisher, Zeiss, etc. Learning how the scopes operated the "hard way" on an older model paid off massively in that line of work. Really cool to see you dive into the electronics because I spent a lot of hours with my service engineers troubleshooting and repairing our scopes in the lab, and it's cool for others to see that (1) there are a ton of electronics needed to get the system to work correctly, and (2) what we were able to do with fairly simple 80s/90s electronics is incredible when you consider how rapidly things improved from the late 90s onward.
We switched to these types of PVC tubes for vacuum down to 1e-4mbar in our labs years ago; we use them to distrubute the from dry scroll pumps to turbomolecular pumps. That means the entire system is free of oil which is important for precision spectroscopy in the UV/VIS regime. Our collegues don't use PVC and try to keep everything from metal which is nice, but also expensive and sometimes awkward to set up when a bellow is just a bit too long or short... The PVC is so cheap you can just cut it to the length you want and be done.
Congratulations for getting this SEM functional! A little tip, the next time you come across membranes switches that do not conduct, gently rub the contact surface of the membrane (black part) across a sheet of paper. Maybe an inch. This will wear off the oxidized surface and make it conductive again.
That's amazing. SEMs don't have to be that large anymore, though. There is such a thing called tabletop SEMs. Still tens of thousands of dollars but compared to the typical half a million they're ALMOST affordable. Like, if you were not planning on buying a new car in the next 10 years, you could get a Phenom or a Hitachi tabletop. The guy from the Breaking Taps channel does his SEM images on a Phenom tabletop IIRC. The Chinese are just getting into that market. Maybe one of these days we'll see just like with the mini lathe and mini mill a mini SEM for less than ten thousand. I imagine it actually might be possible. In the most basic sense you need a vacuum chamber, a roughing pump, a high vacuum stage, an electron gun and an imaging detector. All of these components in themselves could be acquired for about a thousand each. So, a mini SEM could be viable for less than ten, if you're not planning on making any profit, ha.
Yep, as each of the components becomes a commodity item used in large volumes the price drops. The availability of control hardware, I/O and software has plummeted and no longer needs to be fully custom designed saving a lot of money for new startups. Also the patents are expired and the theory is pretty much well understood letting smaller companies try to compete. I love the way China is prepared and able to build to a price when the technology is mature. Modern SEM gear is phenomenal and some let you image at higher pressures so you can do biological samples with less preparation and obviously higher resolution and all the XRF stuff. This means the basic equipment is no longer of much interest to thebig players and there is a market opening for new 'budget' SEMs. I look forward to them flooding the market and reaching the used market.
@16:32 Don't use those cheap hose clamps. Get Oetiker clamps and a crimp tool. They provide uniform clamping force without pinching and lifting the hose around the screw area that those cheap clamps create. You will need to measure the diameter with a caliper and purchase the correctly sized oetiker clamp.
You're bringing back memories. I worked on a Cambridge Instruments SEM back in 1981-83 as well as a Perkin Elmer 595 Microprobe. The SEM was already 12 years old by then. It was a hybrid machine with tubes and semiconductors. The microprobe was new and cost $500,000 back in 1979. Keep it up. You did very well. Thanks for the video.
It's amazing to see this old tech running again! I would love to see more videos about improving the SEM. I bet you could hook into the scanning logic and turn it into an electron beam lithography writer. Breaking Taps had success with using regular acrylic as a resist.
Acrylic is just PMMA. So that's basically what I've always used for ebeam litho. We use MIBK and IPA in a ratio of 1:3 to develop the resist. I don't know how easy it is to source MIBK though, but from I believe distilled water also works so that may be an alternative. Removing PMMA you can do with acetone and then IPA to remove any residue from the acetone. If you can get your hands on some tool to deposit metal, you could even do lift-off and make a real device that way. Very cool project. Looking forward to future updates
In the mid 80s I worked on prototypes for these small desktop SEMs, I don't know if it ever made it into production but it was intended for classroom use. The optics column was 6" diameter, I think it was a 20 keV, it was smaller than that unit and was operated with a PC. The person had been a Perkin-Elmer tech and had worked with another major company as well and had decided to go out on his own.
That restoration is actually insane. Also, I would love to see you image some viewer suggestions, and maybe even some sort of SEM fan mail? Especially, I would really like to see you image some stuff that isn't the typical examples often seen in textbooks and such.
Thank you for the enormous effort you went through to produce this fantastic video! I admire your determination in soldiering on through the most difficult challenges when all seemed lost. You remind us that in the end it’s all physics, not magic, and that there is more than one way to get to a goal. I especially like your ingenius transformer substitution, and the attention to input voltages, and the fact that transformers don’t have to work with the exact listed input as long as you’re willing to calculate the desired output. Too many scientists and technologists today are married to the specification sheets. They can’t see beyond them into the underlying electronic theory. I look forward to your future videos using this fantastic instrument.
Wow as a physicist who used SEMs i'm really impressed by your work and dedication to fixing that old machine. Also it's so cool to see that you can acutally fix it because you have schematics. If you buy a new SEM now you get pretty much nothing.
You'd be surprised at what you can scrounge up with the help of the manufacturer. JEOL was actually able to locate all the documentation minus the schematics
Idk if this is a suggestion for what you should do next or not, but this is what I was thinking when watching the video: 1. WOW! What a repair project! Very inspiring in its own right. 2. That housefly was -really- interesting. Probably a bit out of scope for your interests, but _really_ high magnification images of all areas of that housefly would be cool. Even cooler (and harder) would be to map those pictures to a 3D model of the housefly (machine generated?) from the pictures. It would have been absolutely mind-blowing! Also: An electron microscope version of the "Visual Human", but for various insects and other organisms that are otherwise too small to examine in great detail would also be incredibly interesting. Again: Probably not something you should or would want too do, but thank you so much for planting that idea in my mind by doing this project :-)
@@projectsinflight Maybe you can drive the electron gun in reverse? Just keep the same scanning method but modulate the intensity, and more or less feed a video image into the gun's cathode to control beam intensity.
@@projectsinflight to do e beam lithography you will need to be able to blank the beam, typically done inside the column by steering te beam to a position where a plate intercepts the beam. Search for ‘conjugate blanking’. If you are interested in looking at IC’s you may want to check out “voltage contrast”, a method that lets you observe circuits as they work in real time. Well done with the great methodical approach to restoring your SEM!
13:00 "... in percent instead of an _actual_ pressure unit, like torr" I can accept your insult of bar and pascal if you can explain what the difference between torr and mmHg is. And if you then can repeat that statement from the video without laughing out loud ;) Edit: awesome work on the SEM, good video!
For whatever reason, most of the components and stuff involving vacuum that i've seen deals with Torr rather than Si units. Probably a legacy thing. Honestly I prefer it at this point, kinda like how I still measure the temp in F when dealing with weather and baking, even though I use C for everything else.
As a software engineer I find it super interesting to watch these multi-discipline engineering videos. Keep it up! I have noticed that most youtubers skim or completely leave out the software portions, I would find it enjoyable to hear at least brief explanations. I do concede that there is probably less retention for software discussion, but in my opinion there are good analogies for software that can keep viewers interested too, mainly comparing them to physical engineering paradigms. This was from another video, but I would have been interested in how the PID loop was setup for the furnace
I am a vintage synthesizer enthusiast and most of my synths are late 70s and 80s machines I've rescued from the landfill/cannibalisation for parts. I am just a hobbyist with no degree in electronics engineering and I've learned most through reading, trial and error. To say that I am SUPER impressed with what you've accomplished is saying NOTHING! WOW, just WOW! Absolutely incredible feat of persistence, tenacity and perseverance! I applaud you, sir! Rarely do I praise someone on the internet but this is astounding. You are a true inspiration! I wish you the best of luck in your future endeavours!
What a cool piece of history, and really puts into perspective just how quickly technology evolves. The SEM/TEM platforms I use are all unsurprisingly computer-controlled - stage movement, beam shift, vacuum control, etc. Besides opening the airlock to load/unload my samples, the machine is basically separated from the operator (sometimes in another room entirely to isolate vibrations!). I love seeing the images shown on the CRT screen from a nostalgic perspective, but it's no wonder that we switched to a digital output (as it appears the previous owners of this machine tried to do) - the image can only be displayed on the fluorescent screen as fast as the beam scans over the sample, meaning at slow scan rates you get a faded image on the screen. In a digital environment, once the pixel intensity is interpreted by the software, it can persist indefinitely until the beam scans over it again. Must have been a huge quality-of-life upgrade for microscopists!
one mans trash is another mans treasure. this is an amazing machine that even if its "outdated" will help you and it can probably take MUCH higher resolution images with a little fine tuning and experience with this units quirks. 1) the video issues... a) check the video cables, more may be damaged or corroded b) capacitors may be going bad c) check the signal both with and without the aftermarket board, its probably not that but who knows d) clean the contacts, after all this time it couldnt hurt 2) vibration issues, some fairly stiff rubber pads under the feet of the whole unit would help, also check that the pumps arent too close or the hoses carrying vibration in (a simple stand holding the hose still in the middle would help.) 3) i dont know what you have around it but with how sensitive a EM is, watch for external interference.
It was so cool to see that ring coming into focus, and to realize that the machine was finally functioning. Awesome work, your persistence is inspiring!
Amazing video brother, as a refrigeration technician this was massively interesting because lf how close it all was besides that central vacuum pump type and the actual electron scanning section. This really just re-sparked my interest in microscopes and definitely electron scopes 🤯 I would love nothing more than full length videos where you show the full diagnostic and repair!
Watching you break down all those mechanical parts for the vacuum pump flashed me back to all the stuff I used to help my father with in his workshop when I was a kid as he build an entire new type of drilling rig by himself. And I wish to hell I had paid more attention then because only now decades later am I finding it absolutely fascinating. And speaking of fascinating, OUTSTANDING work rebuilding a damn SEM!! My hat is off to you sir, and thank you for sharing.
Definitely buy an ide->usb or sata->usb adapter and run a full backup of the PCs hard-drive (and possibly add the software to the internet archive) this could save you a lot of future trouble.
Just an FYI, those linear regulators are super inefficient (which is why you get all the waste heat). You can buy a DC-DC switch mode buck converter for a few dollars that will be significantly more efficient and not require the large heatsink for your digital power supply. Additionally, I'd use a couple of electrolytic capacitors on the output instead of the film capacitors you have on the linear currently. Something like a 100uF, 10uF, and 0.1uF in parallel on the output will give you a very clean output voltage.
GREAT watch, thank you. The type of fluid in the diffusion pump seems to have a bearing on how much vaccum you can achieve. "Agilent SY is a high quality, low cost synthetic organic compound. Its low vapor pressure allows it to achieve base pressures in the low 10-8 Torr range. SANTOVAC 5 has ultra low vapor pressure that allows it to achieve base pressures in 10-10 Torr range and low backstreaming rates." $236CAD per liter, $760 per gallon, assuming imperial gallon since its CAD.
Who else got released and happy when the SEM finally started to show some meaningful images? You did an epic job brother! All these experiences you gathered during this repair period, you really is a jack of classic SEM now. Take love from Bangladesh 🇧🇩
holy crap you actually fixed the SEM and got images out of it! That's amazing! I was worried you'd have to fix the Electromagnetic lenses or something even more complex
20 minutes of watching your story made me happy when you got the first images. Can't imagine your happiness after weeks of work. Bravo and thank you! It is so fascinating!
Yeah man, listening you saying how happy you were after managing to make it work made me think about myself.. Repairing my oldtimer, figuring out what´s not working and fixing it. Thank you for this great story
I work in chip design making large processors, and often see CAD images of our designs. Usually in something like cadence virtuoso. I can only imagine how magnificent some of the 7/3/5nm features would like on this. Thank you for this video. It was an awesome watch. You’re an incredibly skilled troubleshooter. Excited to see what chips of your own you make!
Wow! Probably the best single hand repair of a complex system in YT. Your simple explanations are awesome too. Really love this channel. Thanks my friend! ❤❤❤
Fantastic save and epic repair. It may not be up you alley, but maybe once in a while throw in a teardown and repair video like this one. You made the content interesting and captivating enough for a bunch of people to not switch out. And sure, no one needs an SEM at home, but along the same vein, no one needs a complicated Swiss made mechanical watch on their wrist either... so you go do you and stay awesome.
I’m an electron microscope service engineer. I’m always impressed when people resurrect these in their garages, I’ve installed and serviced several that people have in their homes The banding in your image looks like a detector issue, does it use an ETD? I would make sure your grid is clean and theres no light leaks into the chamber, you’ve already checked the vacuum level is good, you tend to see that banding at vacuums worse than 1e-4mbar on an ETD, but id check your PMT connections for bad solder joints
Quite an achievement this is! I bet you learnt a lot on the way. Word of advice: make sure you keep all the original parts in a safe place and not scrap them. Everything (well, nearly everything) is repairable, like the RCA cable which would be very very easy to repair, but especially the huge double C core transformer and the pump can also be fixed. The transformer is quite special and is a very expensive piece. It can be rewound by companies that specialise in this task. If you're lucky, the blown winding will not be deep inside so that the whole transformer will not have to be unwound, only the outer coils. Postage will be a killer though so try to find someone nearby. The pump can be fixed since it is just a rotary engine. Granted, rotary engines have a limited lifetime but this one maybe has some life left in it after resurfacing is done or maybe the chamber is not pitted/scratched anyway. Worn axles can be fixed or their replacements made by machinists. You just need a good one that won't charge a bomb. Etc. etc. Then again, all this is a lot of hassle so it's on you to decide if the time you spend on it will pay off.
This was such a fascinating video, I was never interested in SEM's or semi-conductor manufacturing but I still watched the entire video. Your calm and patient demeanor makes watching the video very pleasant and you explain everything so well, subscribed! I'm glad I found your channel and I'm looking forward to new videos. In regards to what you should do with the SEM, maybe going over different sized chips and showing the progress over years in shrinking the feature size? that would be pretty interesting. Honestly with the way you explain things I will enjoy any video!
had the opportunity to use a modern one in my internship for lab technician 3 years ago, its neat to see how they actually work, the lab did analitycs on material to check for asbestos fiber and differentiate in the 2 types, it also had the ability to tell you the composition to certain degree when you take out of the equation the gold and platinum layer, it was a pretty cool experience and it was a really entertaining video. On a side note i found it pretty neat the strobe warning altought im not light sensitive, great video!!
wow. this is the best repair video on all internet. your effort didnt go unnoticed. i have a suggestion: rebuild this electron microscope and make it opensource. many parts of it are very old, and could be somehow easily changed to a more compact form. the screen, for instance, could be changed to a better display. all the buttons could be more compact too. just to say a few
I've contemplated open-source electron microscopes and I have come to the conclusion that the main limiting factor isn't any of the logic or analog boards, but the electron lenses themselves. The electron lenses are very hard to make and without the ability to make them first there's probably little point to open-sourcing anything else.
Getting a magnification at all from that thing is amazing, but the slowed down one is something else. I don't know if you've seen it, but the channel The Thought Emporium has a two video series creating his own plasma metal coating machine. Seems like something you might be interested in
As a kid I was very impressed with this unimaginable device, it was like something unattainable - almost like a holly item. This video is the first time I get to "meet" an electron microscope close and personal, seeing how it's built and what's inside. I can't explain the feeling, it's like someone shows the inner workings of a light saber to a starwars fan. Well done and thanks for sharing!
Amazing work! You can lightly sand some of the pitted parts in the roughing pump to smooth them out. I guarantee if you hit the area around the shaft seal with the finest grit you can find, it will work again. I rebuilt and repaired dozens of pumps in grad school
If this pump weren't such a pain to work on i'd probably have been able to fix it, but the way it's built you have to take the whole thing apart and put it back together just to test a single thing
Fair play that was an epic repair job, I’d say your frustration levels were really tested, but the high of successfully repairing it is fantastic Congratulations
My job is actually repairing desktop SEMs. The fact that everything in your video is in torr instead of mbar or Pascal kept throwing me off. But very nice repair. We receive a bunch of training for fixing a specific brand of systems and have access to components. You did it with brains and sheer willpower.
those membrane conductive buttons can be refurbished rather than replaced. You need to wipe down with isopropyl, wipe over 1200 grit abrasive and then clean again It usually works - they're carbon lumps and you just need to clean off all the contact surfaces
It is advisable to keep the column and chamber under vacuum while the machine is shut down. If it is reasonably leak tight it will take days or even more than a week to get up to 1 torr.
my university has one of this, its mainly used for metal identification, cant recall exactly the process but involves the emission bandwith and a program that comes with each metal characteristics, i recall my teacher got a sample from a lady that insisted her lot had gold traces, and the only metal we found was iron from the shovel she used lol
Epic repair
Thank you! it was a lot of fun and some stress lol
crazy
Not expected you guys to be here :)
SEM won't slow mo the light
word
I worked for JEOL for 7 years as a field service engineer. I'm super impressed with what you've accomplished. As far as I can tell, you've done everything right. I'm surprised that pump failed, those things are bulletproof. They used them for decades and this is the first bad one I've seen.
The image shifting issue looks like it's an issue with the CRT, or maybe it's driving circuit. It seems to only be on the bottom of the screen and is mag independent. The only things that could cause the image to dance around like that are the CRT or the beam scanning system, which would be effected by mag and the image shift (that is what the joystick is for if I recall). EMI can cause that too, but it would be everywhere not just the bottom.
Keep up the great work.
Regarding the pump: i suspect that if i was more careful, i could find the issue and fix it, but unfortunately this pump is very difficult to troubleshoot because of it's odd design.
Regarding the CRT: yeah it does seem like there is an issue with the driving circuit. seems like the whole screen stretches and shrinks at a time. i'll try replacing the caps and stuff first.
@projectsinflight I'm sure I don't have to say this, but be sure everything is discharged before you mess with the CRT or anything in its circuit. I actually got bit from a CRT I thought was discharged when I was converting an old SEM to LCD.
I would probably try to clean up the image capture signal chain before fixing the CRT. Especially since the image output could be convenient for videos. You could probably just turn the beam off and poke around with an O scope. Then any signal you see is just noise. It's likely a bad connection or a ground. Possibly noise on the reference voltage of the ADC. I've never messed with one of those systems, so I'm just guessing. Good luck.
It's really cool that you got this dinosaur working even if not yet perfect. Finding things you want to examine with it may take a little time. I once saw an image of a coin that had an added mintmark. The microscope made it obvious that the mintmark was added.
After all those years, replacing all the crt capacitors is a must. Do you know what are the video signal specifications, a big non green screen is a nice upgrade
@@generic0000 JEOL BioMagesty 6010c? DiaSys, Germany? )
What's more epic is that the seller kept their word and actually messaged you back when they wanted to scrap it.
Agreed, that was amazing.
Why? Of course he wanted to have free junk removal. It's probably a nuclear felony to throw this thing in a dumpster or landfill lol
Performing a repair on any machine with *this many parts* nonfunctional or degraded is incredible. Troubleshooting gets exponentially harder with the number of failures, and I'm shocked you got anywhere. Kudos.
The schematics are 60 pages long... it's a lot to look at lol
@@projectsinflightcan you put detailed scans online, or was each machine bespoke enough that the schematics and BOM are unique for every unit?
@@RowanHawkins There are some variances in the schematics for the JSM5200 depending on what year it was made, but they are largely the same. The issue at hand is whether or not it is legal to post schematics like this publicly. I suspect JEOL wouldn't care since it is a 40 year old design, but I suspect it is still not legal.
As a low-level professional industry mechanic. I remember long days of really trying to fix something that had multiple problems. You go over it 100 times in your head. Going home and still thinking about it. Then get a new idea (sometimes in dreams) and then try it, only to see it didn't work. But the beauty of it is that sometimes it's fixable, and the thrill you get from seeing it working again.
Your work in this video really captures that journey.
Thank you for sharing it
(❤ 10 µm in size)
I can relate. Sometimes it borders on an unhealthy obsession...
And you can't wait to go to work next day and try the new thing you just got. 😅 One of the few days going to work was not a drag.
@Gislos I can relate to the same experience, but with coding
big nostalgia from when applied science started showing his EM
Ben definitely had a huge impact on my desire to get my own SEM!
Fr
I miss Ben uploading on the regular. :(
Bypass the monitor to pc circuit and use real 75 ohm cable, that will improve the signal a lot. Also use an external monitor to check for errors in the old monitor.
He could do it for testing, but in the end i assume hes gonna want to keep it so he can use it for videos.
@@mactep1 The images he managed to capture from it are stunning and they do not seem to suffer from interference at all. The signal to noise ratio is way better because of the scanning method that gets adjusted by the program, very neat!
If that board is from around the same era as the PC then I'd wager the issue is the board. Caps from that era are notoriously bad.
There is another comment thread from a tech that used to fix these machines that points out that although it looks like that machine is generating a standard video signal, in fact the signal syncs directly to the electron beam. When the PC interface takes over the crt apparently goes garbled.
That’s wild! Congrats on the Craigslist score of a lifetime!
what's crazy is that there are definitely other microscopes that have come and gone that are probably as good or better. usually a lot larger though...
@@projectsinflight I am so, so, so envious. Congrats and tons of respect for getting it working again. And please keep up the long-form videos!
I love the, "yeah, not buying it, buuut if you're ever tired of the hassle...", line; I am usually not one to be embarrassed or afraid to ask, but I guess it just hadn't occurred to me that, despite the seller possibly asking for thousands, it may end up rotting for so long that they actually take you up on that.
Had you been actively monitoring Craigslist or was this a pure chance thing? Also, is that SEM Hackers Discord a public one?
I've been hoping to do the same; I went down the rabbit hole of "reproducible" builds during a university project, which eventually led me to bootstrapping the entire system from "baremetal", and now I am at the stage of insanity where I am genuinely trying to ghetto DIY lithography.
@@projectsinflight Something tells me that this isn't your last Craigslist SEM
The resolution on those last images you showed of the fly were utterly amazing. It's so crazy that this majestic, brilliantly designed machine came very close to being scrapped.
People in industry really don't have the time to repair stuff sadly, unless it's a 100 million dollar machine they'd rather upgrade to the newest one
I am so glad that the algorithm sent your video my way. What an adventure. Congratulations on your persistence and diligence in troubleshooting and fixing this amazing machine.
Thank you! It was a fun project
word of warning, be careful with the window of the EDX (Energy Dispersive X-Ray spectrometer) window. Its only a few micrometers thick and usually made of either beryllium or a polymer (such as formvar). This window isolates the vacuum in the detector and Dewar from that of the SEM in order to allow sample changes without turning the detector into an Icicle. You will also likely need to recalibrate the detector when you first use it, haven't used that model in a while but in general, you put in a pure piece of copper, polished if possible, normal to the beam, then use the K and L peaks to set gain and offset.
Also, the cathode in that model of SEM should last between 20 and 200 hours. its a Type K cathode if i recall correctly. Congrats on the microscopes first light.
Also, if you haven't been told yet, keep the electron gun and its components spotlessly clean. Use a very weak abrasive slurry and cotton to polish the parts. There are various compounds that are suited and many that aren't. There is a Scouring agent in Germany made by Sidol which i recommend to new users, as its difficult to fubar a Wehnelt or anode with it, but it takes a bit longer to clean then using diamond or aluminum oxide polishing compounds. Basically, you need to be able to get everything off the Wehnelt and anode and keep the gun exceptionally clean.
I used a toothbrush and colgate regular. Did I fsck up?
@@bashkillszombies As long as the parts are not bulk Aluminium or chrome plated, toothpaste can work, though some have additives that will contaminate the vacuum of the gun, the simplest toothpaste with the least amount of additives is ok in a pinch, but i would not recommend it. As for Colgate regular, i took a quick look at the MSDS and its not great but its not going to destroy a microscope, assuming of course that its a normal tungsten hairpin type, a LaB6 or Field Exmission machine would be adversely affected if not cleaned perfectly. If the parts are chrome plated they will have that plating abraded rather quickly, if they are aluminum, you will leave micro scratches due to the abrasive being too hard.
Basically, if the parts that where cleaned with toothpaste are washed twice in distilled water, at around 60°C to 80°C in an ultrasonic cleaner (take care to not use glass or metal surfaces to place the parts on, and always place them on a section of the part not exposed to the electric field of the gun. Exceptions apply, basically put don't scratch it by cleaning) then cleaned with acetone fallowed by absolute ethanol or isopropanol, you should be fine. You could also boil the parts in destined water if you don't want to risk using the ultrasonic cleaner.
Also, you can blow that window on the EDS if you vent too fast. That is why there should be some sort of needle valve on the vent line.
We used Pol or Wenol polish with a cotton swab, then wipe clean. Then sonicate in alcohol then acetone for 10 minutes each. Use gloves the whole time and use the wooden stick of the cotton swab to get the wenalt (the cone part with the hole in it that covers the filament) out of the acetone. Blow it off immediately with canned air or a air bulb. If you use canned air, blow a puff away from the wenalt first in case some accelerant comes out from the can being moved.
@@lbochtler Although I appreciate your serious response, I think this was a joke 😅
@@lbochtler Based, fully in-depth, detailed response to a joke comment.
"go cards" likely refers to the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team in STL Missouri USA : )
It's apparently actually the University of Louisville!
I was thinking the same thing lol.
@@projectsinflight Indeed
Given that it's on an IC, I wouldn't be shocked if it could also be for the Stanford Cardinal in Palo Alto
Yup I was thinking the same, gotta be Stanford
The repair is incredibly impressive. Your problem-solving skills come in full-force yet again. My favorite part, while a bit mundane, was the replacing of the old transformer and voltage regulators.
I tried to make the new transformer assembly as well-built as possible for longevity! I even sprung for the aluminum plate lol
I was thinking to bypass the faulty secondary and replace the needed output with just one additional transformer. However, perhaps the aging original transformer would just keep decaying and produce more failed secondaries.
@@thecasualcitizen492 unfortunatly, when one secondary fails it shorts out the whole transformer. Even with nothing connected, the primary side acts as a short at 60Hz AC
My grandfather was one of JEOL's senior technicians and from the dates I saw on the PCBs he may of installed / serviced it before he retired in 1994 sadly, he passed in 2008. I got the opportunity to read through some of those documents/schematics in those blue binders which was thr companys colors, although at the time I was too young to understand and still learning electronics though he always highlighted and cautioned about the high voltages those machines operate at. Great job if you find anything indicating HJL Sr. And/or Harold Jay Leeper Sr. was part of its installation and/or service know someone who really cared a about those microscopes put quality time into making sure it operated as one of the best instrument for its time. BTW Great job on the resurrection!
35 mins of most interesting and satisfying repair ever
Glad you liked it!
If you ever need a complex part machined for this SEM project, please DM me! I own a small 1 man, 5 axic cnc machine shop and I would love to help out this or any other similary cool projects.
Thank you! That is really generous. I definitely have at least one thing I need to make for it soon! feel free to email me (channel name + gmail) if you'd like
@@projectsinflight might want to check with Martin and any other owners you've run across before remaking a part: this is definitely where you want that cross reference, and it's also the best opportunity to make multiples of anything that's likely to need replacement again.
I'd bet you can find some electronics and microcontroller content creators that would love to collab on updating any of those 30 year old guts too.
So cool! I'm no expert by any means, but I have experience with repairing electronics. Replacing old electrolytic capacitors usually solves a lot of noise problems. Especially any located in amplification circuits. Might not be the issue here, but it's cheap insurance and should prevent any old caps from damaging anything. I can't wait to see more of this!
I second OPs comment. This machine is quite old-school, it would for sure benefit from a capacitor refresh.
I plan to go through the boards and replace a bunch of components in the near future
@@projectsinflight I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the noise is caused by the RCA cable you're using. Most of those tend to be unshielded!
replacing everything with good quality caps will drive the guy into bankruptcy! :D
@AKAtheA I just recently recapped an older analog device, and it took 100 capacitors. It was 46$ from digikey +8$ for shipping, using mostly nichicon caps (good quality). He doesn't need to go with custom vishay precision caps.
So satisfying to see it working in the end, let's see what you do with it!
I have so much planned! First up is gold nanoparticles
I once found a freight scale that was built 1900 that had been crushed by a forklift. I found no info about it anywhere but after 3 months of tinkering I got it working.
In equal parts I feel humbled in my accomplishment yet share the feeling of victory in yours. Such a daunting task feels defeating until the end. Truly inspirational man Thank you for sharing.
This is INCREDIBLY cool. Not just the repair itself, but also the fact that there is actually a 'repair-your-electron-microscope-at-home community' out there.
Videos on this channel are my favorite TV Show now, definitely.
Thanks, it means a lot that people like the videos i've made :)
@@projectsinflight UA-cam decided to grace my feed with your presence, and I couldn't be happier! I absolutely love long repair videos made about super technical lab equipment. Keep it coming.
will do!
Wow, this is (to me) the coolest "will it start" in YT land. Electron microscope… Let that sink in. Years ago I found sem pictures (real photos) when the university hired us to get out some trash. I thought this was too cool so I stole a bunch of them. They show plant cells in the 25 µm range.
My favourites would be the Trini…kaboom glass and chips graffity.
So cool You pulled this off- nerd. Inspiring. Gives me motivation to get thru my own stuff.
I collect old electronics and am trying to learn how to fix them -by doing. Today I fixed an ac milivolt-meter. It seemed like something was shaky and I re soldered the main board with lead solder. I only use lead solder, it flows with less heat and looks pretty.
And I have such a de soldering gun- a cheap chinesium but it works. Sometimes it clogs up tho- I still figure it out. And I rebuilt the switching for the vacuum pump, the old way it lagged.
But still: get Yourself a ZD-915 desoldering gun. It´s entry level but good enough. I wouldn´t have started the repair today if I only had wick.
I digress… Still: a very impressive thing to have, that Sem. Kind Regards
Thank you! I'm holding out for my own hakko but i'll check out your model as well
@@projectsinflight Thanks- It´s the cheapest model on the market with acceptable parts availability.
The Hakko can´t do anything better, it´s just more expensive. Give the Hakko a run for its money. Desolder all and everything in one go- does it clog? Run it above 320C for leadfree, at 290C for lead solder.
Mine does clog and it´s annoying.
If it does I heat it up to its max until it can suck itself free.
I modded mine with a relay for the pump (before all the power went thru the handpiece) and a buck converter for the annoying fan.
But that´s it- I just re did a voltmeter mainboard in chase of a shaky connection (found it).
I never would have done that with solder wick…
Thank You again, glad I could help.
I´m still at awstruck over Your project.
That´s the good stuff…
I've always wondered if SEM/STEM would benefit from some of the same algorithms used in astrophotography. With AP we usually have to take many long exposures, then combine them in software to get a SNR that's remotely decent. It gets even more complicated when you use filters and a monochrome camera. Also, the software usually has functionality to align the images based on the detected stars in the image, and the more advanced algorithms can even stretch and squish your images to account for things like sensor tilt, optical distortions, etc. That part would be more difficult with SEM images, but it's certainly doable, and you don't have the problem of a moving target.
Since you're only scanning at one beam energy level at a time, I wonder if it'd be possible (or even sensible) to take the same image at different beam energies, then treat those like RGB channels.
These are just idle thoughts, I doubt they're very original and likely other people have already attempted it, but it's the sort of thing I'm interested in.
Considering that a SEM image is still nothing more than a Matrix of intensities, it is generally possible to apply all the same CV algorithms for things like feature detection, stitching or similar. It should be noted, though, that stuff like calculating homographies (e.g. for panorama stitching) gets harder, the smaller the imaged area is, obviously. So if you go with a higher magnification, many algorithms need to be more sophisticated.
Would be an interesting project to implement a bit of CV sugar with the SEM!
Interesting idea... I suspect that it would be useful to overlay different images, but only at the same beam energy.
I do not know if it would be useful to do it at different beam energies. The reason is that at different beam energies, the amount of surface detail actually changes, and so at lower kV you see more detail, but have more chromatic aberrations in the lens. so you'd be trying to overlay different but equally valid images. It's a really intriguing idea and kinda makes my brain hurt thinking about exactly how you'd go about solving that one.
I should definitely look this one up to see if others have tried
@projectsinflight I'd be willing to spend some time messing with it if I had some of your images. I've been tinkering with some of the Python libraries out there for this sort of thing for astro so I can build my own software for automatically importing, organizing, calibrating, and doing a "first pass" processing before I bring it into tools I know are beyond my skill to replicate.
I'd have to put together a plan of what to capture to be truly able to tell if it improves image quality, but I also wouldn't be surprised if better software already exists. SEM image processing isn't exactly something I've come across in my career as a software developer. It'd also be a lot of work on your end to capture a bunch of different exposures, and you may be happy with the quality you already have. Astrophotography is a masochistic hobby so I wouldn't mind doing it, but that's not universally considered fun.
Quite a lot of the algorithms for SNR increase used in astrophotography are already used in modern EMs. There are even more advanced techniques avalible for electron microscopes when compared to astrophotography. At lest compared to advanced amature astrophotography.
feel free to email me if you'd like and i can send some images when i get a good sequence. my email is the same as this channel name at gmail
Dang i just watched 35 min about a microscope i dont know shit about. This was really entertaining to watch. Keep up!
Almost 50 years ago there was an article in Scientific American on how to build a rudimentary SEM with off the shelf components. I was captivated by it and always wanted to act on it down the road but never got around to it. So glad you were able to realize your dreams with this instrument. Power supplies are usually the first point of failure in electronic devices. So glad you were able to work around those issues, as well as the vacuum ones.
Plenty more to go- but i am super satisfied it works now!
27:38
There are actually conductive pads you can apply to broken membrane switches to fix them, but this is also a nice method
I thought about doing that- but i was too impatient to wait for shipping :P
@@projectsinflight I fix the conductive rubber pads by rubbing a 3B of 4B graphite pencil on their surface. Excellent work you´ve done !
When i saw the hole image appears on the old crt, i felt so excited, like i watched cells from microscope for the first time.
I was so happy when I first realized that the machine was actually imaging something- best feeling in the world lol!
Awesome stuff! I've worked in field service in EM for 10 years and I learned a couple things. I rarely get to see these older systems and I love to see them get a second (or third) life!
Please be careful with radiation, it's a unseen danger working with these systems especially with modifications that may or may not have been communicated over time. Seemingly innocent things like a modified pressure gauge can be an ideal escape route for x-rays.
I used a geiger counter with pancake detector and saw nothing, but i am awaiting an X-ray spectrometer to see if there are any leaks
As an retired manufacturing Engineer in semi conductors , I loved every second of this video.
I worked with E M technician only one time , these machines are awesome.
You have the bestest toys.
My toys are woodworking tools and cameras these days.
Thank you from California.
I liked the detail of having it stop moving and the cable fully disconnected exactly when you say "off" at 13:20 it's VERY satisfying to my brain
Haha, you'd be surprised how much time I put into some of those audio/visual syncs. This one, however, was entirely accidental!
Heya, awesome project! The old computer probably still has a harddrive in it (spinning rust), which tends to significantly degrade over time. I'd highly recommend to make a backup and/or transfer the drive onto a modern disk/SSD
good news, i have imaged the disk!
though i'd really like to replace the computer with a more modern one or make my own capture device. this thing is really clunky lol
@@projectsinflight I'd recommend that you capture the disk image, convert to a VMDK/virtual disk, and then run the computer using a virtual machine. Physical to virtual isn't that challenging, but i am VCP/VCAP certified engineer though. My brother has a CNC system that had an old legacy PC and single point of failure. Once virtualizing it, the hardware can fail and it's a quick and easy process to have it working again. Can even turn it into a high availability solution. His only SPOF today on the control side is the software requires a USB hardware dongle key to operate.
tho if it did somehow have an ssd in it, it likely would have lost the data by now, as hdds are much better at 'cold' storage of data
@@dohabandit the capture card might be a problem if it's not PCIe
@@dohabandit You can't just do this, these sorts of machines have an accessory card (often multiple) connected into the motherboard that receives the data from the SEM, and special drivers that handle this. For this vintage, I highly doubt it is PCIe or something simple like that as well.
Pretty cool to see that an SEM is basically not much more than an old-fashioned analog CRT camera tube where you can stick a sample into. So most of the repair techniques from analog televisons apply here -- the lack of vertical stability is probably due to capacitors in the deflection circuits.
it's true, the SEM is basically just a CRT, but with extreme care in designing a CRT with a VERY VERY narrow beam and small spot size lol.
Well summarised ❤❤
Took my first SEM images on a JEOL JSM-T330A (circa 1985 IIRC) and from that moment on I was hooked. Went to work for several years in a microscopy lab with a variety of different brands of SEMs - Hitachi, FEI/ThermoFisher, Zeiss, etc. Learning how the scopes operated the "hard way" on an older model paid off massively in that line of work.
Really cool to see you dive into the electronics because I spent a lot of hours with my service engineers troubleshooting and repairing our scopes in the lab, and it's cool for others to see that (1) there are a ton of electronics needed to get the system to work correctly, and (2) what we were able to do with fairly simple 80s/90s electronics is incredible when you consider how rapidly things improved from the late 90s onward.
We switched to these types of PVC tubes for vacuum down to 1e-4mbar in our labs years ago; we use them to distrubute the from dry scroll pumps to turbomolecular pumps. That means the entire system is free of oil which is important for precision spectroscopy in the UV/VIS regime. Our collegues don't use PVC and try to keep everything from metal which is nice, but also expensive and sometimes awkward to set up when a bellow is just a bit too long or short... The PVC is so cheap you can just cut it to the length you want and be done.
Congratulations for getting this SEM functional! A little tip, the next time you come across membranes switches that do not conduct, gently rub the contact surface of the membrane (black part) across a sheet of paper. Maybe an inch. This will wear off the oxidized surface and make it conductive again.
I still have the originals- I'll give that a shot!
That's amazing. SEMs don't have to be that large anymore, though. There is such a thing called tabletop SEMs. Still tens of thousands of dollars but compared to the typical half a million they're ALMOST affordable. Like, if you were not planning on buying a new car in the next 10 years, you could get a Phenom or a Hitachi tabletop. The guy from the Breaking Taps channel does his SEM images on a Phenom tabletop IIRC.
The Chinese are just getting into that market. Maybe one of these days we'll see just like with the mini lathe and mini mill a mini SEM for less than ten thousand. I imagine it actually might be possible. In the most basic sense you need a vacuum chamber, a roughing pump, a high vacuum stage, an electron gun and an imaging detector. All of these components in themselves could be acquired for about a thousand each. So, a mini SEM could be viable for less than ten, if you're not planning on making any profit, ha.
Yep, as each of the components becomes a commodity item used in large volumes the price drops. The availability of control hardware, I/O and software has plummeted and no longer needs to be fully custom designed saving a lot of money for new startups. Also the patents are expired and the theory is pretty much well understood letting smaller companies try to compete.
I love the way China is prepared and able to build to a price when the technology is mature. Modern SEM gear is phenomenal and some let you image at higher pressures so you can do biological samples with less preparation and obviously higher resolution and all the XRF stuff. This means the basic equipment is no longer of much interest to thebig players and there is a market opening for new 'budget' SEMs.
I look forward to them flooding the market and reaching the used market.
I am convinced that in the near-ish future a new SEM will be at or below the price of a new car (and not just a Lamborghini lol)
@16:32 Don't use those cheap hose clamps. Get Oetiker clamps and a crimp tool. They provide uniform clamping force without pinching and lifting the hose around the screw area that those cheap clamps create. You will need to measure the diameter with a caliper and purchase the correctly sized oetiker clamp.
found the VW engineer
Those clamps are fine for what he is doing. They're not really for the seal, they're to keep the hose from slipping back off.
You're bringing back memories. I worked on a Cambridge Instruments SEM back in 1981-83 as well as a Perkin Elmer 595 Microprobe. The SEM was already 12 years old by then. It was a hybrid machine with tubes and semiconductors. The microprobe was new and cost $500,000 back in 1979. Keep it up. You did very well. Thanks for the video.
This is one of the coolest repair videos I’ve seen! Great job and looking forward to seeing future semi-conductor work with this
Thank you! I am very excited to move forward with this new tool!
It's amazing to see this old tech running again! I would love to see more videos about improving the SEM. I bet you could hook into the scanning logic and turn it into an electron beam lithography writer. Breaking Taps had success with using regular acrylic as a resist.
Oh that is definitely on my list!
Acrylic is just PMMA. So that's basically what I've always used for ebeam litho. We use MIBK and IPA in a ratio of 1:3 to develop the resist. I don't know how easy it is to source MIBK though, but from I believe distilled water also works so that may be an alternative. Removing PMMA you can do with acetone and then IPA to remove any residue from the acetone. If you can get your hands on some tool to deposit metal, you could even do lift-off and make a real device that way.
Very cool project. Looking forward to future updates
great effort, hats off mate
thanks for watching :)
Congrats! You certainly worked for that outcome, much respect!
Thank you! I've got so much interesting stuff planned for the sem!
In the mid 80s I worked on prototypes for these small desktop SEMs, I don't know if it ever made it into production but it was intended for classroom use. The optics column was 6" diameter, I think it was a 20 keV, it was smaller than that unit and was operated with a PC. The person had been a Perkin-Elmer tech and had worked with another major company as well and had decided to go out on his own.
That restoration is actually insane. Also, I would love to see you image some viewer suggestions, and maybe even some sort of SEM fan mail? Especially, I would really like to see you image some stuff that isn't the typical examples often seen in textbooks and such.
Thank you for the enormous effort you went through to produce this fantastic video! I admire your determination in soldiering on through the most difficult challenges when all seemed lost. You remind us that in the end it’s all physics, not magic, and that there is more than one way to get to a goal. I especially like your ingenius transformer substitution, and the attention to input voltages, and the fact that transformers don’t have to work with the exact listed input as long as you’re willing to calculate the desired output. Too many scientists and technologists today are married to the specification sheets. They can’t see beyond them into the underlying electronic theory. I look forward to your future videos using this fantastic instrument.
I'm glad you enjoyed it! I can't wait to do some stuff with nanoparticles in the next video!
Nice machine, is wonderful that you give it a second live
I hope it works for many years to come!
@@daniel38535 especially that others gave up on it!
Congratulations on your amazing achievement in bringing the machine back from the dead.
i honestly cannot believe it myself
Wow as a physicist who used SEMs i'm really impressed by your work and dedication to fixing that old machine. Also it's so cool to see that you can acutally fix it because you have schematics. If you buy a new SEM now you get pretty much nothing.
You'd be surprised at what you can scrounge up with the help of the manufacturer. JEOL was actually able to locate all the documentation minus the schematics
I like how they’re still repairable! Super fun video to watch at 3am
Great job getting it working mate. Super cool!
glad you enjoyed it!
Thank you for sharing this
Very happy to share! I've wanted one for so long and I wanted to show people it was possible (with some luck and help)
She’s a beautiful machine.
I really like the green CRT :)
Idk if this is a suggestion for what you should do next or not, but this is what I was thinking when watching the video: 1. WOW! What a repair project! Very inspiring in its own right. 2. That housefly was -really- interesting. Probably a bit out of scope for your interests, but _really_ high magnification images of all areas of that housefly would be cool. Even cooler (and harder) would be to map those pictures to a 3D model of the housefly (machine generated?) from the pictures. It would have been absolutely mind-blowing! Also: An electron microscope version of the "Visual Human", but for various insects and other organisms that are otherwise too small to examine in great detail would also be incredibly interesting. Again: Probably not something you should or would want too do, but thank you so much for planting that idea in my mind by doing this project :-)
Great video. No timelapse and no music - thank you for that.
Incredible patience and skill you have.
this is one of the best videos ive ever seen🙌
thank you! i am very excited to use the machine
pls do some e-beam litho, in labs they do features with a few nm resolution using SEMs. :)
I will definitely be trying to do e-beam when I get some more information on how exactly to drive the beam externally
@@projectsinflight Maybe you can drive the electron gun in reverse? Just keep the same scanning method but modulate the intensity, and more or less feed a video image into the gun's cathode to control beam intensity.
@@Stoney3K The intensity of the electron gun is determined by its temperature, which cannot be adjusted on small times scales unfortunately
@@projectsinflight to do e beam lithography you will need to be able to blank the beam, typically done inside the column by steering te beam to a position where a plate intercepts the beam. Search for ‘conjugate blanking’. If you are interested in looking at IC’s you may want to check out “voltage contrast”, a method that lets you observe circuits as they work in real time. Well done with the great methodical approach to restoring your SEM!
13:00 "... in percent instead of an _actual_ pressure unit, like torr"
I can accept your insult of bar and pascal if you can explain what the difference between torr and mmHg is. And if you then can repeat that statement from the video without laughing out loud ;)
Edit: awesome work on the SEM, good video!
For whatever reason, most of the components and stuff involving vacuum that i've seen deals with Torr rather than Si units. Probably a legacy thing. Honestly I prefer it at this point, kinda like how I still measure the temp in F when dealing with weather and baking, even though I use C for everything else.
I love how it wasn't just repaired, but many components are now updated with better technologies, it's a great restoration project.
As a software engineer I find it super interesting to watch these multi-discipline engineering videos. Keep it up! I have noticed that most youtubers skim or completely leave out the software portions, I would find it enjoyable to hear at least brief explanations. I do concede that there is probably less retention for software discussion, but in my opinion there are good analogies for software that can keep viewers interested too, mainly comparing them to physical engineering paradigms. This was from another video, but I would have been interested in how the PID loop was setup for the furnace
I am a vintage synthesizer enthusiast and most of my synths are late 70s and 80s machines I've rescued from the landfill/cannibalisation for parts. I am just a hobbyist with no degree in electronics engineering and I've learned most through reading, trial and error. To say that I am SUPER impressed with what you've accomplished is saying NOTHING! WOW, just WOW! Absolutely incredible feat of persistence, tenacity and perseverance! I applaud you, sir! Rarely do I praise someone on the internet but this is astounding. You are a true inspiration! I wish you the best of luck in your future endeavours!
Thank you! I am happy that others are so interested in my niche hobbies :) It's cool to meet like-minded people!
What a cool piece of history, and really puts into perspective just how quickly technology evolves. The SEM/TEM platforms I use are all unsurprisingly computer-controlled - stage movement, beam shift, vacuum control, etc. Besides opening the airlock to load/unload my samples, the machine is basically separated from the operator (sometimes in another room entirely to isolate vibrations!).
I love seeing the images shown on the CRT screen from a nostalgic perspective, but it's no wonder that we switched to a digital output (as it appears the previous owners of this machine tried to do) - the image can only be displayed on the fluorescent screen as fast as the beam scans over the sample, meaning at slow scan rates you get a faded image on the screen. In a digital environment, once the pixel intensity is interpreted by the software, it can persist indefinitely until the beam scans over it again. Must have been a huge quality-of-life upgrade for microscopists!
one mans trash is another mans treasure. this is an amazing machine that even if its "outdated" will help you and it can probably take MUCH higher resolution images with a little fine tuning and experience with this units quirks.
1) the video issues...
a) check the video cables, more may be damaged or corroded
b) capacitors may be going bad
c) check the signal both with and without the aftermarket board, its probably not that but who knows
d) clean the contacts, after all this time it couldnt hurt
2) vibration issues, some fairly stiff rubber pads under the feet of the whole unit would help, also check that the pumps arent too close or the hoses carrying vibration in (a simple stand holding the hose still in the middle would help.)
3) i dont know what you have around it but with how sensitive a EM is, watch for external interference.
I need to figure out how to clean relay contacts... no idea yet
It was so cool to see that ring coming into focus, and to realize that the machine was finally functioning. Awesome work, your persistence is inspiring!
It was one of the most exciting moments! Glad you liked it!
Amazing video brother, as a refrigeration technician this was massively interesting because lf how close it all was besides that central vacuum pump type and the actual electron scanning section. This really just re-sparked my interest in microscopes and definitely electron scopes 🤯 I would love nothing more than full length videos where you show the full diagnostic and repair!
Watching you break down all those mechanical parts for the vacuum pump flashed me back to all the stuff I used to help my father with in his workshop when I was a kid as he build an entire new type of drilling rig by himself. And I wish to hell I had paid more attention then because only now decades later am I finding it absolutely fascinating. And speaking of fascinating, OUTSTANDING work rebuilding a damn SEM!! My hat is off to you sir, and thank you for sharing.
Thank you for watching!
Looks retro futuristic. Glad it worked. Solid piece of tech.
Definitely buy an ide->usb or sata->usb adapter and run a full backup of the PCs hard-drive (and possibly add the software to the internet archive) this could save you a lot of future trouble.
Already done!
Just an FYI, those linear regulators are super inefficient (which is why you get all the waste heat). You can buy a DC-DC switch mode buck converter for a few dollars that will be significantly more efficient and not require the large heatsink for your digital power supply. Additionally, I'd use a couple of electrolytic capacitors on the output instead of the film capacitors you have on the linear currently. Something like a 100uF, 10uF, and 0.1uF in parallel on the output will give you a very clean output voltage.
Great video and good results! It's nice that you found our SEM group early :)
Thanks! I really appreciate all the support I've gotten from the group. It definitely cut out a lot of time i'd have spent spinning my wheels
Would it be possible to join this group? I've got a JEOL 6400 that I've repaired!
@@keatonmertz2756 message nmz787 on discord for an invite!
Wow!! Great video. So glad you resurrected that thing. Not everyone can say they have a SEM and you understand the nuts and bolts of that thing
GREAT watch, thank you. The type of fluid in the diffusion pump seems to have a bearing on how much vaccum you can achieve. "Agilent SY is a high quality, low cost synthetic organic compound. Its low vapor pressure allows it to achieve base pressures in the low 10-8 Torr range. SANTOVAC 5 has ultra low vapor pressure that allows it to achieve base pressures in 10-10 Torr range and low backstreaming rates." $236CAD per liter, $760 per gallon, assuming imperial gallon since its CAD.
I congratulate you for your dogged persistance in repairing this SEM. It was an immense amount of luck that you had others travelling the same path.
Who else got released and happy when the SEM finally started to show some meaningful images? You did an epic job brother! All these experiences you gathered during this repair period, you really is a jack of classic SEM now. Take love from Bangladesh 🇧🇩
Impressive repair sequence. Made me smile when the image came into focus.
Glad you liked it!
holy crap you actually fixed the SEM and got images out of it! That's amazing! I was worried you'd have to fix the Electromagnetic lenses or something even more complex
20 minutes of watching your story made me happy when you got the first images. Can't imagine your happiness after weeks of work. Bravo and thank you! It is so fascinating!
This video of your project blew me away! As a retired engineer I was super impressed. It's extremely rare for me to subscribe but here, I have,
Yeah man, listening you saying how happy you were after managing to make it work made me think about myself.. Repairing my oldtimer, figuring out what´s not working and fixing it. Thank you for this great story
I work in chip design making large processors, and often see CAD images of our designs. Usually in something like cadence virtuoso. I can only imagine how magnificent some of the 7/3/5nm features would like on this.
Thank you for this video. It was an awesome watch. You’re an incredibly skilled troubleshooter. Excited to see what chips of your own you make!
Wow! Probably the best single hand repair of a complex system in YT. Your simple explanations are awesome too. Really love this channel. Thanks my friend! ❤❤❤
Thank you! Glad you like it!
STOP fiddlin' with your knob! j/k. as a fixer/upcycler/repurposer this project had teamwork, tenacity, and timing, what luck! huge smile on face.
Fantastic save and epic repair.
It may not be up you alley, but maybe once in a while throw in a teardown and repair video like this one. You made the content interesting and captivating enough for a bunch of people to not switch out.
And sure, no one needs an SEM at home, but along the same vein, no one needs a complicated Swiss made mechanical watch on their wrist either... so you go do you and stay awesome.
I’m an electron microscope service engineer. I’m always impressed when people resurrect these in their garages, I’ve installed and serviced several that people have in their homes
The banding in your image looks like a detector issue, does it use an ETD? I would make sure your grid is clean and theres no light leaks into the chamber, you’ve already checked the vacuum level is good, you tend to see that banding at vacuums worse than 1e-4mbar on an ETD, but id check your PMT connections for bad solder joints
I'll check the PMT. feel free to email me at projectsinflight at gmail dot com if you'd like to help more :)
Quite an achievement this is! I bet you learnt a lot on the way. Word of advice: make sure you keep all the original parts in a safe place and not scrap them. Everything (well, nearly everything) is repairable, like the RCA cable which would be very very easy to repair, but especially the huge double C core transformer and the pump can also be fixed. The transformer is quite special and is a very expensive piece. It can be rewound by companies that specialise in this task. If you're lucky, the blown winding will not be deep inside so that the whole transformer will not have to be unwound, only the outer coils. Postage will be a killer though so try to find someone nearby. The pump can be fixed since it is just a rotary engine. Granted, rotary engines have a limited lifetime but this one maybe has some life left in it after resurfacing is done or maybe the chamber is not pitted/scratched anyway. Worn axles can be fixed or their replacements made by machinists. You just need a good one that won't charge a bomb. Etc. etc. Then again, all this is a lot of hassle so it's on you to decide if the time you spend on it will pay off.
That sir, is a righteous hack. Good job on some incredible work! :)
This was such a fascinating video, I was never interested in SEM's or semi-conductor manufacturing but I still watched the entire video.
Your calm and patient demeanor makes watching the video very pleasant and you explain everything so well, subscribed!
I'm glad I found your channel and I'm looking forward to new videos.
In regards to what you should do with the SEM, maybe going over different sized chips and showing the progress over years in shrinking the feature size?
that would be pretty interesting.
Honestly with the way you explain things I will enjoy any video!
That's a good idea! I should find a good selection of chips from the different eras!
had the opportunity to use a modern one in my internship for lab technician 3 years ago, its neat to see how they actually work, the lab did analitycs on material to check for asbestos fiber and differentiate in the 2 types, it also had the ability to tell you the composition to certain degree when you take out of the equation the gold and platinum layer, it was a pretty cool experience and it was a really entertaining video. On a side note i found it pretty neat the strobe warning altought im not light sensitive, great video!!
so awesome you were able to save this old amazing machine from a scrap pile, my son and I really enjoyed it
wow. this is the best repair video on all internet. your effort didnt go unnoticed. i have a suggestion: rebuild this electron microscope and make it opensource. many parts of it are very old, and could be somehow easily changed to a more compact form. the screen, for instance, could be changed to a better display. all the buttons could be more compact too. just to say a few
I've contemplated open-source electron microscopes and I have come to the conclusion that the main limiting factor isn't any of the logic or analog boards, but the electron lenses themselves. The electron lenses are very hard to make and without the ability to make them first there's probably little point to open-sourcing anything else.
Getting a magnification at all from that thing is amazing, but the slowed down one is something else.
I don't know if you've seen it, but the channel The Thought Emporium has a two video series creating his own plasma metal coating machine. Seems like something you might be interested in
As a kid I was very impressed with this unimaginable device, it was like something unattainable - almost like a holly item.
This video is the first time I get to "meet" an electron microscope close and personal, seeing how it's built and what's inside.
I can't explain the feeling, it's like someone shows the inner workings of a light saber to a starwars fan. Well done and thanks for sharing!
I'm glad you liked it! It's such a cool machine!
Amazing work! You can lightly sand some of the pitted parts in the roughing pump to smooth them out. I guarantee if you hit the area around the shaft seal with the finest grit you can find, it will work again. I rebuilt and repaired dozens of pumps in grad school
If this pump weren't such a pain to work on i'd probably have been able to fix it, but the way it's built you have to take the whole thing apart and put it back together just to test a single thing
I love seeing people like you saving what was initially probably hundreds of thousands worth of kit from being consigned as junk its awesome!!!!
Fair play that was an epic repair job, I’d say your frustration levels were really tested, but the high of successfully repairing it is fantastic Congratulations
Thank you! it was quite the journey!
My job is actually repairing desktop SEMs.
The fact that everything in your video is in torr instead of mbar or Pascal kept throwing me off.
But very nice repair. We receive a bunch of training for fixing a specific brand of systems and have access to components. You did it with brains and sheer willpower.
I literally cheered when you first got the stage into focus. Inspiring work on this repair, and thanks for documenting it!
Thank you! It was quite the journey!
those membrane conductive buttons can be refurbished rather than replaced. You need to wipe down with isopropyl, wipe over 1200 grit abrasive and then clean again
It usually works - they're carbon lumps and you just need to clean off all the contact surfaces
It is advisable to keep the column and chamber under vacuum while the machine is shut down. If it is reasonably leak tight it will take days or even more than a week to get up to 1 torr.
Yeah I usually store it under vacuum
my university has one of this, its mainly used for metal identification, cant recall exactly the process but involves the emission bandwith and a program that comes with each metal characteristics, i recall my teacher got a sample from a lady that insisted her lot had gold traces, and the only metal we found was iron from the shovel she used lol
Remarkable! Very impressive that you haven taken such time and care to repair this old device. Bravo!
Thank you!