A review of the Accuscope 3016/16 Microscope
Ten years ago I bought an Accuscope 3016 microscope. These microscopes are made in China. I was curious about the quality their products since I have had expereinced poor quality issues with Chinese made machine tools in the past. Times have changed since then, and now all the leading microscope manufacturers have some models made in China, including Zeiss.
I kept reading the specs on the 3016 (the trinocular version of the 3015) and was amazed at the features you could get for "only" $1200 (this seems a lot now). These microscopes are currently being sold.
Features:
Siedentopf head 30 degrees incline.
Inward facing nose piece.
Modern stand with low controls.
Three lens condenser (I thought that this meant it had some correction).
The condenser has an easy centering device.
Koehler type illuminator with aspheric lens and iris diaphragm.
Infinity corrected optical system.
Positives:
When I received the microscope, I was amazed at its weight. All controls worked smoothly and precisely, a good feeling. I also own a Zeiss KF 2 with standard Zeiss optics. I compared the Accuscope's performance with the Zeiss. I could see no difference in resolution and contrast.
Par centering and par focus is very good. I bought it with the standard achromats, which give a reasonable flat field. A lot flatter than my Lomo, but that is not personally important to me. The field is, under all powers, evenly illuminated when observing visually.
Negatives:
1) The aspheric lamp condenser has the flat surface ground to diffuse the light. This was very disappointing to me, since I am a "Koehler freak". That makes the corrections in the illuminating system almost useless. When taking pictures, uneven illumination becomes disturbing.
2) There is no filter holder under the condenser. Since I like to play with illumination tricks such as darkfield , oblique, Rheinberg etc., that was unacceptable. I made my own filter holder and screwed it to the condenser. In the picture, the white plastic part under the condenser is my home made filter holder.
3) The 10X objective has only a working distance of about 0.6mm. I could not live with that because I like to observe aquatic organisms, using well slides. I called the dealer and inquired about the working distance of the 10X Plan objective. So I ordered it. It has a more acceptable working distance. That was an additional $100.
The fact that it has infinity corrected objectives intrigued me most, but now I wonder why I wanted it. This is good to have when for some reason the tube length has to change, like adding an epi illuminator etc.
Out of curiosity, I put one of those objectives into my American Optical microscope to see if they work there. They do work. I checked it with my test slide and verified that they are really infinity corrected.
Summary:
I like this microscope, especially after I fixed it up the way I wanted it. It is not a research microscope (it is advertised as "Koehler type" not Koehler), but it performs well and is pleasant to use. It is a quality instrument.
Visually, I could not detect any inferiority to any other microscope I possess. That includes Lomo, full Koehler Swift, Zeiss KF2 and an AO 150.
Would I buy it again knowing what I know now? Maybe not. My junky Lomo with its Koehler illuminator and Apo objectives is still my favorite.
Accuscope 3015 Microscope
