I’ve always wanted my own optical bench sense working in an ellipsometry lab in undergrad. After getting into photography, I increasingly wanted to design my own photo lenses, so I even had a use for an optical bench eventually. My Prusa Mini+ has unlocked so many projects and this is one of them. But the other key development was getting comfortable enough with OpenSCAD to whip up these lens mount models in under an hour. And that works great because these mounts print in under an hour. You really start living the rapid prototyping dream at that point.
These are all small lenses and most are very light weight because they are made from plastic, not glass. The heavier glass lenses need a couple quarters on their mounts’ bases to make them more stable. Once I have an actual table to mount these to, that won’t be a problem.
I have some really interesting large glass lenses that this design won’t work for. I’ve got some ideas of how to design mounts for those in my notebook.
I also need to find a good imager module that doesn’t have a lens (or one with a lens that is easy to remove). I have an old camcorder that might work – I haven’t dug into it to find out how much any of its parts still work.
If you’ve got any ideas for some additions, drop me a line.