Your microscope stage is carefully machined in our shop to allow for installation of the optical encoders.

Several holes are drilled and tapped in the stage to receive machine screws for attachment of encoder mounting plates.

The stage is first aligned in a milling machine using a dial micrometer, as shown in Fig. 1.

Figure 1. Alignment of stage to the milling machine bed.

A hole pattern, unique to the particular type and model of stage, is then precisely drilled along the rear edge and underside of the stage (Fig. 2).

These holes are then threaded for the screws used to secure an encoder mounting plate to the stage.

Figure 2. Holes are drilled and tapped for attachment of the encoder mounting plate.

Holes are located to within 0.0005 inches using digital readout of the milling machine bed position (Fig. 3).

Figure 3. Milling machine coordinates are read to an accuracy of 0.0005 inches.

Custom designed mounting plates, tailor made for each make and model of microscope stage, are used to attach the microscale optical encoders to the stage. Figure 4 shows an example of the X-axis encoder as installed on a Nikon Eclipse 600 rectangular stage.

Figure 4. X-axis microscale encoder installed on Nikon Eclipse 600 stage.

The Y-axis microscale optical encoder is mounted out-of-sight along the underside edge of the microscope stage (Fig. 5).

Figure 5. Y-axis encoder installation on the Nikon Eclipse 600 stage.