I saw the USB microscope on the UK Maplin site for just under £50 (although I have seen them on eBay for around £22 now!) and it seemed worth buying to see if it had a use in the workshop. When it arrived I was very impressed with its performance and ease of use. It has the facility to make videos as well as still pictures very easily and shows up very well using the full screen on my spare laptop. After ‘playing’ with it for a while I decided to take it out into the workshop and see how it performed in that environment. I made two tests as it were. One was to see how well it would operate as an aid to centre drill an item on the milling machine. I didn’t take the time to make a stand mounting for the trial and just held it by hand. Because the item I was about to drill wouldn’t allow a centre drill to get there I used an ordinary drill with the disadvantage that all drills have without centre drilling first, that of wander. Video of a small 1/16th\" drill and starting it centre with a USB Microscope I was very surprised at the view I had and the 1/16^th drill shown in the video. You cans see quite clearly the drill wander straight away, but by watching the screen I could adjust the use of the quill until the drill was running true before continuing to drill the part and an early success. The second test was to use the microscope as an inspection aide and this area in particular may be where the greatest benefits will accrue.  The item I used for inspection was a camshaft I had just started working on following completion of the main machining. What I have to do is finish the profile by filing then sanding the cam lobes with fine grade wet ‘n’ dry paper. The first cam has had some filing done and a little sanding but the other cams had a lot more work needed. By using the microscope it was very easy indeed to see the work done on the first lobe compared with all the others. Video of a close look at a model camshaft for the Seal engine So what do I think of the Maplin sourced microscope?  Well I believe it does have a place in the model engineer’s workshop for areas where high accuracy is required. Whilst the camera is fairly robust I cannot see me using it all the time since the workshop environment could cause it damage, but if there is anything I want to see clearly I now have a tool that can operate between 20X and 200X to see what is what.  The next thing to do will be adapting the DTI stands to hold the microscope which does come with its own stand and clamp.  

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