Comment by krisoft
5 years ago
I’m genuinly curious: what do you mean by vaporware?
It usually means some software or hardware which is advertised but not available to buy. Here with a few clicks you can find literal printable files, detailed manual on assembly and the software and a scientific paper describing the project. And that is just a quick scan. What makes it vaporware then?
Clearly you can’t buy it, but you can download it right now and start printing it.
I used the terms “appears to” deliberately. There appeared to be no shots of actual output (see other notes on this page), finished builds or builds in progress, and nothing but renders of the product. A little disconcerting. Normally you’d see both on the homepage of a cool project like this one, along with smiling students showing theirs off, etc.
I built one a few months ago for our middle school science lab. It's relatively mature-- a decent mechanical system for the optics, with an OK (simple) optical design, and great build instructions.
The places where it's lacking: the electrical parts for motor drivers are clunky and annoying to build. The software could be a little better. And the transmissive microscopy setup is a bit dodgy.