3D Stage for upright Confocal Microscope

I designed and built this 3D (X-Y-Z-Tip-Tilt-Rotate) stage for upright confocal microscope for NLO crystal imaging. The stage was controlled through Joystick using LabVIEW GUI. The X-Y and Z stage had 7nm and 2nm resolution.

Stage Assembly

Specially Designed Crystal Holder adapter

Tip-Tilt-Rotation stage: ThorlabsTip/Tilt (±5deg ) -Rotate stage (±10deg) (TTR001)

Z Piezo Stage: Physik Instrumente P-611.ZS 100µm travel 2nm resolution

X-Y Stage: Physik Instrumente M 112.1DG 25mm travel 7nm resolution

Focus Block: Thorlabs (MGZ-30)30mm range 2.5µm resolution

NLO Crystal

Stage Components

Focus Block X-Y Stage adapter designed by me

X-Y Stage

Z Piezo adapter designed by meZ-piezo stage

Tip-Tilt-Rotation stage Crystal Holder designed by me

Control Software GUI

Z control

X-Y control

I used LabVIEW to write the software to control the stages with a Logitech X3D Joystick. PI provides all the LabVIEW drivers and a big library of SubVIs so It was easy to write a nice GUI. The GUI have 3 modes of operation: Continuous, stepping and load position. In continuous mode user can control the stage with joystick and choose the speed depending on the magnification of the microscope. User can also define home position and move the stages by feeding desired coordinates.

Stepping Mode

Move leftMove Up

Move Down

Move Right

Move Left

In stepping mode user can choose the step size in mm and stage would move in steps by pressing the buttons shown above. For every move user has to press and release the button. The direction is according to the FOV of the microscope.

Load Position Mode

Save position

Load position

During continuous operation mode user can save stage X-Y positions to file by pressing the button on the joystick. Once the sample scan is finished the user can load the position file to the GUI and can return to the saved positions one by one for confocal scanning and optical sectioning.

The stage cost around $17500.

SLM Microscope designed and built by Pranav Rathi (PhD)