Chris Jones wrote:

so i am thinking a good 5x desktop magnifier lamp (about 30 dollars)
and a decent 3x magnifier (about 10 dollars) both with about 6 to 8
inch focal length should provide enough to at least do soic's. I say
this cause my 2.5x/2x compound is almost good enough for bigger soic's
so the 3x/5x compound might be enough to handle quad flat packs (those
100+ pin IC's you see on PC motherboards etc. ).

surface mount stuff? In fact, any sort of magnification including diy
microscopes would be okay.


Try this:
http://www.funsci.com/fun3_en/uzoom/uzoom.htm
I have not built one but holding up a camara lens to a pair of binoculars
gave me a promising image.
Chris




thanks very much for the link. Exactly what i was looking for. When you
held up the camera lens to the binoculars, was the image reversed by
any chance? The design in the link calls for twin prisms. Just
wondering if excluding the prisms might cause a flipping of the image.

Thanks again