Hi, all, just wanted to bend your ear on how you all go about magnifying your tooling to assess the condition or size etc... Normally I take mine into the shop where I work and use the comparitor, but lately, that's getting to be a pain so I'd like to pick up some sort of small microscope comparitor type unit. Any suggestions on what to look for?

I guess I could pick up a used microscope but there are no witness lines or "gage" lines so I guess I could use it with a scale when checking against a cutter?

Also thought of using the mach 3 video window with a webcam, but I think I'd really like to have a stand alone unit.

Please let me know what you are using and thanks for your input..
Dave

Bud,
There are a lot of options just depends on what one comes across and what ya want to do with it.
Want it to be portable or bench? You need at least 30x to measure. Good grief I have a collection of stuff.
I attached a pic of a Titan 30x microscope mounted on my Atlas lathe along with the graduated reticle showing the  0.001" graduations.

On the bench a toolmakers microscope is ideal ( I have a Gartner ). You can also get good used quality microscopes, some are variable magnification like 20 to 60x, fical micrometers can be used as an objective for quick accurate measuring, or you can just have a crosshair recticle and use an accurate X Y table to measure distance.  Goes on and on. Good cheap junk is hard to come by anymore though!

RICH

see this post: http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php/topic,6686.msg43682.html#msg43682

The Edmund is great for taking pictures and measuring.

Real nice Rich, thanks for sharing. This is exactly what I was referring to as a microscope would be perfect. Guess I need to watch ebay a bit more in the coming days. I'm thinking I could machine/scribe my own "reticle" as a background to compare to the tooling.

This looked pretty interesting and I know I've seen some software that has measuring grids as well.

http://www.dealextreme.com/p/portable-usb-5-500x-2-0-mp-cmos-digital-microscope-with-8-led-illumination-black-47484

Thanks again-
Dave

I'm thinking I could machine/scribe my own "reticle" as a background to compare to the tooling.

Doubt that the scribing will be satisfactory, but, depends on the user.

Why not just take a high resolution macro digital picture and bring it into CAD? You can then measure the tool very accurately.
Poor mans microscope.......
RICH

That's very good, Rich, nice thinking!