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Not affiliated with them but have used them ever since I was trying to solder and wondered why I couldn't focus close enough.

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As you age you inevitably run into the issue. The OptiVISOR is one solution:

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I am posting this because I just got the OptiLOUPE accessory and it works really well. I could read the markings on a SOD-123 diode:

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As I understand it the OptiVISOR has glass lenses and the OptiVISOR LX has plastic lenses. The plastic lenses may not be as good, so bear that in mind if you are looking.

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I have the DA-4 lenses for the OptiVISOR and they work well for soldering surface mount components. I have the DA-5 lenses on the way. Thought I would see how they compare to the DA-4.

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Mike M

I use a cheap Chinese copy using plastic lenses, that originally cost around ?8 GBP.

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It has a second drop down lens behind the first, to further increase the magnification, plus a single swivel monocular.

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It also had a pair of incandescent bulbs, either side of the headband, which I have swapped out for LED's powered by rechargeable cells, recovered from discarded disposable vapes, I often find littering the street.

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It works well enough for my purposes, as I still have to wear my prescription spectacles underneath, because they have corrective prism lenses.

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I also just acquired from AliExpress, a cheap <?20 GBP video microscope, with a desk mounted angle poise stand. This works really well when used close up, and can be connected to a PC for a larger display, or for taking videos and snapshots of items being viewed. The contrast isn't quite as good when the object being viewed is a few inches away, such as when soldering a PCB, but it's generally OK. The anglepoise stand is a great addition, as I can quickly swing the whole thing out of the way, when I don't need it.

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Here are some are typical listings.

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Updated version of my headband magnifier

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Some other styles

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4.3" digital microscope

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Anglepoise Stand

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All of these types of aids can be of considerable use, especially as we age. I tend to use SMD components most of the time, even when breadboarding circuits using "dead bug" or "Manhattan" style construction, and I don't really find it any more difficult than using much larger through hole components.

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Regards,

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Martin

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On Fri, Jan 3, 2025 at 09:46 PM, Mike M wrote:

I don't have a microscope, but it would be very useful to have. I have various magnifiers I use on occasion, but a microscope would be much better.

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Mike M

I used a stereo microscope at work daily for the last 10 years of my electronics career. The B&L were most common, but I used my personal Zeiss scope. The B&L scopes were used with fiber optic halogen light sources that could brand your skin if you touched the bright end. My scope had a florescent ring light. In my opinion the ring light gave the most even lighting, but it had cool white color spectrum and that made reading resistor color codes a problem. I do not have any experience using LED ring lights made for video cameras but I expect they would be perfect for the purpose. ALL of the scopes had added 0.5x adapters added to the final lenses. That halves the total magnification but doubles the working distance under the scope. That is really a requirement. The adapter lens is also cheap protection for the expensive lens system of the microscope. You absolutely want to protect the expensive scope from deposits of crud from solder smoke and spitting flux or anything else coming off your work piece. All of the B&L scopes had 10x eyepieces. The 0.5x adapter made that 5x actual optical magnification. My scope had 15x eyepieces, but I used it at 0.5x zoom level. The added 0.5x adapter made that about 4x optical magnification. I preferred having slightly more field of view but could still zoom in if I needed more detail. In actual fact, many of the other techs used their florescent adjustable arm bench lamps with a 6" glass lens in the middle. With young eyes that gave enough magnification to do the work but I could always tell the difference when I compared their work against similar work done under a microscope.

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Those bench lamps had around 2x-3x magnification but had excellent eye relief and around 6" (15cm) working distance. It is critical to have enough working distance to get your soldering iron under the lens system. The more magnification, the less working distance. The 10x 4" adjustable arm desk lamps I see on Amazon claim to have useful working distance. When I tried a 3x headband, I was worried I'd burn my nose with the soldering iron.... I tried a 10x jeweler's eye loupe but that was useless except for doing close inspection. I haven't tried a video camera system but I look at them online. I've considered playing around with cheap USB computer cameras, USB inspection cameras, or fancier DLSR cameras with close-focus lenses. For a DIY system I'd recycle a gooseneck desk lamp as the camera mount and use a LED ring light with the camera. I've ordered a 10x 5"x3" magnifier adjustable lamp from Amazon to try. I ordered one with 19" arms so it can mount further back on the table.