LED Technology for Stereomicroscopes

Carl Zeiss now offers LED-based accessories for its stereomicroscopes. These include cold light sources with high power LEDs and – especially for the microscopes in the SteREO Discovery series – LED intermediate tubes for intensive fluorescence excitation. This allows energy-saving, efficient work with high-quality results.

The CL 6000 LED and CL 9000 LED cold light sources can be used on all stereomicroscope systems from Carl Zeiss for reflected light and transmitted light illumination, for brightfield and darkfield applications, polarisation contrast and other illumination and contrasting techniques. Thanks to the use of high power LEDs as light sources, only short camera exposure times are necessary. The colour temperature remains constant at each light intensity. The LEDs provide white light, daylight quality illumination with unparalleled light intensity and homogenous illumination of the object field. The flicker-free light guarantees vibration-free live images on the monitor.

Due to the long product life and low energy consumption of the LEDs, maintenance work and operating costs are lower than with the halogen bulbs traditionally used. The CL 9000 LED light source can be controlled with the AxioVision software and the system control panel of the SteREO Discovery microscopes from Carl Zeiss.

For the SteREO Discovery microscopes, Carl Zeiss offers LED intermediate tubes that have been specially developed for intensive fluorescence excitation with blue and UV light. They enable fluorescence with outstanding contrast and a dark background such as that required, for example, for crack testing in the automotive and aerospace industries or for document and fibre examinations. As there is no need for external light sources, the use of the LED tubes considerably reduces energy consumption and operating costs for fluorescence applications. For multiple fluorescence, two intermediate tubes can be combined on one system.

The external operating element SyCoP (System Control Panel) permits easy and precise regulation of the intensity of the LED intermediate tubes S.