Adam Savage's One Day Builds - Fiber Optic Microscope Ring Light!

**Adam Savage’s One-Day Build: Upgrading an Inspection Microscope with a Fiber Optic Ring Light**

In this article, we’ll follow Adam Savage as he dives into a one-day build project, upgrading his inspection microscope with a fiber optic ring light. The video transcription below has been transformed into a detailed, readable article that captures the entire process.

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### **Introduction: A Tiny Problem and a Giant Solution**

Adam Savage begins his latest project in his workshop, known as "the Cave." He’s about to shoot a show in town but first needs to address a challenge: he’s received some exceedingly tiny parts from a fan—screws so small they’re barely visible at the bottom of a case. To inspect these minuscule components, Adam pulls out an old inspection microscope—a tool he purchased during his MythBusters days.

However, as he prepares to use it, Adam realizes something is missing: the microscope lacks a fiber optic ring light, which would provide the perfect lighting setup for detailed inspections. This oversight isn’t just an inconvenience; it’s a problem he needs to solve today.

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### **The Setup: Pulling Off the Shroud**

The first step is to prepare the inspection microscope for modifications. Adam removes the shroud covering the microscope, exposing its internal components. He carefully disassembles the microscope, noting that it’s a Bausch and Lomb model with a reasonable depth of field.

As he works, Adam mentions an important tip: when taking something apart, he always places screws in the same orientation they were in on the device. This practice, which he learned from Robert Persing (the author of *Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance*), helps him avoid confusion during reassembly.

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### **The Challenge: Cutting Round Material**

One of the key components Adam needs to create is a coupling for the fiber optic ring light. He explains that the interior ring on the microscope’s bottom is threaded, which means he can machine a custom coupler out of Delrin plastic.

However, cutting round material on a bandsaw can be tricky. Adam warns that materials like Delrin and brass are “bitey,” meaning they can grab the blade and cause unexpected movement. To avoid this, he recommends clamping flats to the material or using a blade suited for the task. In this case, since he’s working with Delrin, he opts for a sharp blade and proceeds carefully.

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### **The Precision: Using Forstner Bits and Calipers**

Next, Adam turns his attention to cutting a hole in the coupler using a Forstner bit. He explains that the Forstner bit is about a quarter of an inch smaller in diameter than the fiber optic ring light, giving him enough material to work with.

He emphasizes the importance of precise measurements. Using calipers and a depth tool, Adam calculates the exact diameter he needs for the hole. He also mentions a helpful tip: when working with materials like Delrin, it’s crucial to take small passes to avoid breaking the blade or damaging the material.

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### **The Build: Machining the Coupler**

With the hole cut, Adam moves on to shaping the coupler using a lathe. He explains that he’s aiming for a diameter of 2.4 inches, which is a “nice round number” suited for engineering applications. Using his favorite lathe tool—an indexable carbide insert—he carefully machines the coupler to the desired size.

Throughout this process, Adam highlights the importance of patience and precision when working with soft materials like Delrin. He demonstrates how to measure the material using a gauge and adjust the cross feed to achieve the perfect fit.

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### **The Final Assembly: Attaching the Fiber Optic Ring Light**

Once the coupler is complete, Adam attaches it to the microscope’s bottom. He explains that the threaded interior of the coupler fits perfectly with the microscope’s existing threading, ensuring a secure connection.

Next, he connects the fiber optic ring light to the microscope. Using a belt sander, he trims any excess material from the coupler to ensure it fits smoothly. Finally, he tightens everything down and tests the setup by turning on the power supply.

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### **The Result: A Brilliant One-Day Build**

With the fiber optic ring light now fully integrated into the microscope, Adam is able to inspect the tiny screws with remarkable clarity. He marvels at the quality of the light source and the ease with which he can adjust the focus and zoom in on the minuscule parts.

Reflecting on the project, Adam notes that this was one of the fastest one-day builds he’s ever completed. The process involved just a few key steps: creating the coupler, attaching it to the microscope, and connecting the ring light. He also jokes about how small modifications like these can give old tools new life, calling it a “second act” for his inspection microscope.

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### **Conclusion: Tools with a Second Act**

In closing, Adam Savage encourages viewers to explore similar tool upgrades. He points out that while 3D printing could be an option for creating couplers and other accessories, machining or repurposing materials like Delrin is often just as effective—and much more satisfying.

As he wraps up the video, Adam expresses his gratitude to his audience, encouraging them to continue exploring their own creative projects. He also plugs his online store, offering viewers a chance to purchase a Tested-branded t-shirt as a token of appreciation for their support.

And with that, Adam Savage signs off, leaving his audience inspired and ready to tackle their next one-day build.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey everybody adam savage here in my cave with another one day build i was about to shoot a show in town because i got some lovely stuff from a fan and it includes some exceedingly tiny parts which you can barely even see at the bottom of this case these are screws so small I almost can't resolve them with my eye but I have a piece of equipment that might be able to however I think it's missing a key thing that I'm going to need to add to it and that is today's one-day bill let's go get this piece of equipment and set it up part one part inspection microscope alright so this is something I bought back during the mythbuster days when I needed it for one of my experiments and okay so this is a an inspection microscope yeah I guess it just does that ah right I need to see what it's let's see here huh there we go whew okay it's about there so it's a little lower bring this down down and yeah look at that oh man okay so ah my issue is this and the fact is the fact is back when I got this I had another piece of equipment that I'd always intended on adding to it and that was this this is a fiber optic ring light so when I attached it to look at that see that yeah this is a really nice piece of equipment super soft fiber optic lots of thin lines and I put a bright light source up to this and mount it right here and I get a really really nice inspection microscope but I never got around to doing that and it didn't even occur to me that I hadn't gotten around to doing that until I got those tiny parts and I thought oh well let me pull out that microscope and take and remember so what is the light source for this I'm glad you asked it's light box yeah ah let's see here go fine fight connect huh I think somehow powers messed up the reason I think that there's something wonky with the power is the fan doesn't start up when I turn it on there's no other switch besides this min/max switch here and I'm having trouble opening this all the way I guess looks suspiciously like a switch in there big power supply fan motor and big fat switch ah it had just not been closed well sometimes the solution is easy so this has a safety and that it won't go on until you've actually closed it and yeah there's the fan going okay cool well that was that was an easy fix so let's put it all the way to men we will tighten it up and then there we go okay so here's how this works the fiber-optic goes in here you turn it on look at that what oh yeah dude this is amazing it's a cold light I mean actually you can feel the UV just from the ultraviolet but it's a fabulous light I actually have two of these because well you know at one point I was making television money um so what I'd like to do is connect up this ring light to this microscope and to do that I've got this with this bottom here and I need to machine a coupling for this bottom it's actually kind of cool check this out this interior ring here is actually threaded and that leads me to believe that I might be able to figure out its threading and make a make a little a little coupler out of Delrin that connects up to this this has just three tightening thumb screws there and hold it down these little bits of nylon it's missing one but I've got more of those so um yeah today's one day build attaching this ring light - this microscope let's get started and the first thing I want to do is pull off this shroud ooh oh there you go I want to pull up I need a bigger screwdriver I'm gonna pull off this shroud and then I can work on it in peace without having to worry about harming the rest of the microscope it's actually a really nice Bausch and Lomb microscope with a reasonable depth of field one of the things I do when I am taking something apart is as I pull out screws I put them in the orientation on the table that they were in on the device I learned this from Robert piercing San Francisco native and I think he centers this go native I could be wrong no bozeman later anyway Robert person who wrote presenting the other motorcycle maintenance talked about doing that and ever since I read that I was like oh yeah I should totally be doing that Hey oh-oh-oh-oh it seems I have removed something different than I thought I was removing but that's okay that's alright oh okay so now I see what I've got here uh-huh that lives there yeah this is just a zinc pot metal pot metal thing wait a second how do you that's it look at that okay cool so obviously this whole thing is removable it went in like this which means that this is the front I'm just gonna label that again nice piece of telomere I don't need it to be that thick right I just need it to be like that Plus that so let's say 0.6 inches thick I won't cut myself a little chunk of this are you quite finished a note I wanted to say about cutting into round material on a bandsaw be careful the reason is is that bandsaw depending on the blade you've got in there can be very bitey especially on certain materials delwyn is super bitey it's soft it grabs brass is another one that's very much like that and there are times when you might be cutting something and going this and it spins on you and anything that's gonna move in a way you didn't expect is the thing that could help introduce your flesh to a blade and that is bad so ground material I have it sometimes when I've had to cut larger round things have actually clamped flats to them so they can't spin but this I know that I just changed out this blade it's nice and sharp and this Delrin is soft and good so we're also but I know that this blade is nice and sharp I just put it in and Stellan can be handled by this plate so I didn't have to worry and it's like nice maths but PVC pipe is another one that can lose it's been on you don't want that I thought I was shooting but I wasn't I just faced off the front of this guy on lathe and now I'm gonna drill the first hole and to do that I'm gonna use this Forstner bit to drill the hole so this Forstner bit you can see is it's about a quarter of an inch less in diameter than this ring light and that's great for me that gives me some meat that I can grab on to and I'm probably going to go just to slightly less than the depth of the Forstner bit here so here we go Forstner bits need a lot of pressure to work so they can move things on your lathe tighten stuff down really tight yeah that's great swap out my live Center for an actual drill check you know what I prefer the big Jacob's chunks for these simply because sometimes when you put a lot of pressure on a thing like a Forstner bit in a keyless chuck it can put so much pressure on the keyless chuck he gets stuck closed and that's that lovely all right leave that Chuck in there because we're gonna drill a smaller hole right away now the smaller hole needs to be able to Turbie turn down enough that I can kind of pressure fit it into threading here I'm not gonna cut the threads either way small and I don't need to worry about that this is not a precision instrument I'm making but you can see that the the Forstner bits size gives me a little bit of meat yeah it's I don't need this isn't a high-pressure situation so I don't need much more meat than that oh here we go oops this one cutting beautifully however I want to point out that remember I made some marks that's how much the pressure the force from it has pushed my work back into this now I should still be okay with that because I don't need a huge amount of material but I am gonna push this back out Andrey clamp it if you really don't want it to move you can back it sometimes with something that will prevent that material from going and I could have done that and I have done it but it wasn't that important for this one so now I'm gonna go that a little bit farther right so now let's just see how that turns that's fine alright so now I'm gonna uh is that fine I feel like I could that's good enough okay so I am gonna use and where is it there's one of my alaura's Universal bits there we go that's the one this might be my all-time favorite lathe tool this is Anna loris CRT 20 it uses a carbide insert that is indexable so when you beat this insert up you can turn it to the next one and to the next one and on the other side so you get six cutting services per insert and you can adjust this to any angle you want or to a whole bunch of different angles it's fabulous when you're doing a lot of aesthetic work so here we are I'm gonna just done lay down oh right I've delayed it down to a specific a specific diameter and that's this diameter but what is that diameter and so I've got the thing I want to measure I've got my telescope engaged I can press the gauge as far as I can go I put it into the middle and there we go now that's it okay so I tighten up the gauge with it off angle and then I bring it into into level and that pressures the pieces yes there we go cool and that tells me the overall this thing isn't perfectly round that's fascinating but it's close enough yeah so that is the distance I'm going to be working with and that distance is 2.4 2.4 I'm gonna think that it's 2.4 Engineers big companies like nice round numbers and I'll wager that's exactly what that was so 2.4 is my goal so this is something that I do a lot when I want to come up with a critical measurement when I want to come up with a critical measurement for something like this and I want to cut it down to one here's what I'll do actually bring a tool in and knowing that I'm underneath under the you know at a comfortable place I'll just take off a little bit you see that yeah now you can see okay so I haven't moved I haven't moved the cross slide what happens is if I measure this and it says that it is three wait where am I at 2.4 that's where I'm at that's what I want to point for and right now this thing is that pretty much exactly three inches give or take 5,000 diameter then I set my cross feed to zero and I know that I need to take six hundred thousandths out of that point six inches Delrin is pretty soft and easy to machine so I'm gonna go in two passes of three hundred thousand my cool pose Delrin can be grippy and it also can create ribbons that get tied up and they start smacking you in the face yeah look at that yeah but you got to be gentle with Delrin it'll fight you jump out of it and try and bite into it too hard and jump right out of your Chuck nobody wants that all right so just to double-check I took 300 some odd thousand sound and now I am at 2.7 yep okay so I'm right in the zone there are many cases in which I would get more exactly about this but I don't need to be here so here we go I'm going to go all the way to 600 thousands up there that top number my cross slide is so precise right now it's a beautiful thing up here we go and I wouldn't use the auto-feed but again it would create these long ribbons and I don't like that every time you stop the ship breaks the ribbon breaks and you want that I don't want these presents fighting into me flying around now I'm just gonna face this because you hear that that's it being off by now there it's good okay let's change let's measure it out look at that 2.4 exactly okay 2.4 - that means that this should fit really nicely on there it's nice alright so again now I need to cut the second cut and I'm gonna use a different tool for this kind of do hmm about to do a little bit of some quick and dirty kind of special effects type of lathe where Kearse don't take it personal be upset with me machinists of the world because I'm working with Delrin I have a lot of latitude material attitude so what I need to do now is on the backside of this I need to actually let me get to UM here I've got this step right here that step and when I laid the outside of the interior of that step it's going to hopefully thread or fit pressure fit right into this ring on the bottom of the on the bottom of the microscope so I need to know the diameter of that like exactly how big that is and I also need to know where to start my plunge tool and I'm going to basically be using my thick cutoff tool to make this measurement and I'll show you how I do it so here's how this whole measurement thing works I got to figure out where to start my tool and I'm gonna do that with a DEP thing tool here so this is a pair of calipers and if you've handled a pair of calipers you know that not only do they measure outside diameters with the jaws then you're inside diameters with the little tails behind the jaws not super high precision but plenty good enough for commercial special effects work and then there is this this depth thing tool and that's what I'm going to use here I'm gonna put that up in here I didn't even need to know the measurement but I can set my lathe tool to be exactly that correct distance right so I've zeroed out my CNC over there i'm i dro and i need to get from four point to the measurement of this to one point five to the outside measurement the inside measurement of this and when I do the calculator four point two minus one point five two that tells me I need to take that really four point to my am I totally insane yes I am it's not four point two it's two point four this is how mistakes are made two point four minus 1 point 5 2 equals 0.88 that sounds more like it yeesh so now all I need to do is start up the Machine push my tool in until I get a reading on my dro of point zero eight eight and I know I'm at the right diameter so here we go yeah you see how it's gathering up there that's a classic Delrin move not too concerned point go free clothes okay okay that's one cuts clear away the material second cut you want to see this it's a nice cut whoops name good pull that out third cut just move this over a little bit like that I'll admit this isn't the most ideal use of a cut-off tool but I learned some bad habits and special effects and I'm not changing clear away some of this detritus come on looks like whoo Wow now wait a second looks like oh yeah okay I might still be able to get this to work yes yes I will yes I will okay so wow that worked amazingly well so my measurements were fabulous I cut in a little too far here and consequently I only ended up with this little tiny lip but that's about all I wanted so I made a very happy mistake here so I'm gonna just hit this on the bandsaw and we'll test fit it did I say bandsaw I didn't mean bandsaw I meant um belt sander so like I said I screwed up but apparently my screw up didn't bone me because I still was left with a little tiny lift and that lip turns out to be enough - oh that is that is a sexy story right there um that's kind of all I knew excuse me I burped there that's kind of all I need for this because I just needed to be strong enough to hold on to that and it is so I think this might be one of the fastest one day builds ever I think we might be able to put this bad boy back together and I think we can do it yeah right okay so is there a screw that holds you on there isn't me back in there and we have a top dead center long screw I'm recording right yes I am all right good the real trick is gonna be how do I get the shot I'm looking through this thing but we'll get to that oh right I need do I need I don't I don't need these nylon screws should be plenty so this comes in here like that and then those a little keeper there we go oh nice that's a nice piece of equipment you're a very nice piece of equipment okay tighten down and then I'm gonna get a yeah I'm going to pop this here like that and then I'm gonna tighten it in oh dude that is sexy and I am going to do some straining there so it doesn't so there's not too much weight sitting on that piece and I'm gonna move my fiber-optic power supply here we go there let's lower this down is that right now how about that hi Maggie okay so let's end to the power supply something pretty excited about this turn it on oh yeah and this should be oh right okay so I should have that set at that bottom yeah see oh my god okay so depth is I still need to go down about an inch that's tightened down you come down there then should be able to raise my steel whoo okay let's suggest that Oh baby oh that is gorgeous okay so let me get one side in focus oh wow okay yeah holy cow yeah I know you've got to see this so oh yeah we're getting it hey come on let's see if I can get this Oh almost almost almost oh my god it's so specific so yeah so now you can see yeah you can see just how close up this is one of my mini machinist screwdrivers oh yeah there's my fingernail oh and actually yeah here's my ooh yeah how about my how about my injured finger want to see that yeah you do Oh yummy okay so if I if I show some part of my fingerprint they are like that and I adjust the focus there we go and yeah I can actually adjust the light all over the place ooh Wow wait a minute there's zoom holy cow hold on oh my god come on ladies and gentlemen look at that okay that's officially oh I forgot that I'd ordered it with zoom so when i zoom in it actually it actually changes the focus so I gotta bring this over here oh come on come on yeah okay that is pretty that's pretty amazing you're welcome everybody thanks for looking at my dirty fingers here here's a there's a scar tissue on my finger Oh super cool so there you have it this is a beautiful ring light nicely attached to the bottom of my inspection microscope which has been sitting languishing for years really in storage and it's backing up and running again yeah well that um that might just be the fastest one day build I have ever done it's just a single single ring uh connecting two pieces and this is the kind of thing like you don't need to live anymore to do that you could 3d print that I mean it might take you a couple tries but 3d printing is exactly the perfect medium for those kind of tool mods and I do those kind of tool mods all the time on my tools attach things to those tools that makes them more useful and yeah I get a whole second life out of this I gotta figure out where in the shop that's gonna live because I'm not gonna take it apart and put it inside a closet again it's can live or you can look at stuff thanks for joining me for this one day build I'm Adam Savage this is destined comm I'll see you next time thanks for watching a hundred percent of whatever you just watched that's awesome we get to add that to our completion rate you deserve something you deserve a t-shirt for all your hard work follow the link below buy yourself a tested official t-shirthey everybody adam savage here in my cave with another one day build i was about to shoot a show in town because i got some lovely stuff from a fan and it includes some exceedingly tiny parts which you can barely even see at the bottom of this case these are screws so small I almost can't resolve them with my eye but I have a piece of equipment that might be able to however I think it's missing a key thing that I'm going to need to add to it and that is today's one-day bill let's go get this piece of equipment and set it up part one part inspection microscope alright so this is something I bought back during the mythbuster days when I needed it for one of my experiments and okay so this is a an inspection microscope yeah I guess it just does that ah right I need to see what it's let's see here huh there we go whew okay it's about there so it's a little lower bring this down down and yeah look at that oh man okay so ah my issue is this and the fact is the fact is back when I got this I had another piece of equipment that I'd always intended on adding to it and that was this this is a fiber optic ring light so when I attached it to look at that see that yeah this is a really nice piece of equipment super soft fiber optic lots of thin lines and I put a bright light source up to this and mount it right here and I get a really really nice inspection microscope but I never got around to doing that and it didn't even occur to me that I hadn't gotten around to doing that until I got those tiny parts and I thought oh well let me pull out that microscope and take and remember so what is the light source for this I'm glad you asked it's light box yeah ah let's see here go fine fight connect huh I think somehow powers messed up the reason I think that there's something wonky with the power is the fan doesn't start up when I turn it on there's no other switch besides this min/max switch here and I'm having trouble opening this all the way I guess looks suspiciously like a switch in there big power supply fan motor and big fat switch ah it had just not been closed well sometimes the solution is easy so this has a safety and that it won't go on until you've actually closed it and yeah there's the fan going okay cool well that was that was an easy fix so let's put it all the way to men we will tighten it up and then there we go okay so here's how this works the fiber-optic goes in here you turn it on look at that what oh yeah dude this is amazing it's a cold light I mean actually you can feel the UV just from the ultraviolet but it's a fabulous light I actually have two of these because well you know at one point I was making television money um so what I'd like to do is connect up this ring light to this microscope and to do that I've got this with this bottom here and I need to machine a coupling for this bottom it's actually kind of cool check this out this interior ring here is actually threaded and that leads me to believe that I might be able to figure out its threading and make a make a little a little coupler out of Delrin that connects up to this this has just three tightening thumb screws there and hold it down these little bits of nylon it's missing one but I've got more of those so um yeah today's one day build attaching this ring light - this microscope let's get started and the first thing I want to do is pull off this shroud ooh oh there you go I want to pull up I need a bigger screwdriver I'm gonna pull off this shroud and then I can work on it in peace without having to worry about harming the rest of the microscope it's actually a really nice Bausch and Lomb microscope with a reasonable depth of field one of the things I do when I am taking something apart is as I pull out screws I put them in the orientation on the table that they were in on the device I learned this from Robert piercing San Francisco native and I think he centers this go native I could be wrong no bozeman later anyway Robert person who wrote presenting the other motorcycle maintenance talked about doing that and ever since I read that I was like oh yeah I should totally be doing that Hey oh-oh-oh-oh it seems I have removed something different than I thought I was removing but that's okay that's alright oh okay so now I see what I've got here uh-huh that lives there yeah this is just a zinc pot metal pot metal thing wait a second how do you that's it look at that okay cool so obviously this whole thing is removable it went in like this which means that this is the front I'm just gonna label that again nice piece of telomere I don't need it to be that thick right I just need it to be like that Plus that so let's say 0.6 inches thick I won't cut myself a little chunk of this are you quite finished a note I wanted to say about cutting into round material on a bandsaw be careful the reason is is that bandsaw depending on the blade you've got in there can be very bitey especially on certain materials delwyn is super bitey it's soft it grabs brass is another one that's very much like that and there are times when you might be cutting something and going this and it spins on you and anything that's gonna move in a way you didn't expect is the thing that could help introduce your flesh to a blade and that is bad so ground material I have it sometimes when I've had to cut larger round things have actually clamped flats to them so they can't spin but this I know that I just changed out this blade it's nice and sharp and this Delrin is soft and good so we're also but I know that this blade is nice and sharp I just put it in and Stellan can be handled by this plate so I didn't have to worry and it's like nice maths but PVC pipe is another one that can lose it's been on you don't want that I thought I was shooting but I wasn't I just faced off the front of this guy on lathe and now I'm gonna drill the first hole and to do that I'm gonna use this Forstner bit to drill the hole so this Forstner bit you can see is it's about a quarter of an inch less in diameter than this ring light and that's great for me that gives me some meat that I can grab on to and I'm probably going to go just to slightly less than the depth of the Forstner bit here so here we go Forstner bits need a lot of pressure to work so they can move things on your lathe tighten stuff down really tight yeah that's great swap out my live Center for an actual drill check you know what I prefer the big Jacob's chunks for these simply because sometimes when you put a lot of pressure on a thing like a Forstner bit in a keyless chuck it can put so much pressure on the keyless chuck he gets stuck closed and that's that lovely all right leave that Chuck in there because we're gonna drill a smaller hole right away now the smaller hole needs to be able to Turbie turn down enough that I can kind of pressure fit it into threading here I'm not gonna cut the threads either way small and I don't need to worry about that this is not a precision instrument I'm making but you can see that the the Forstner bits size gives me a little bit of meat yeah it's I don't need this isn't a high-pressure situation so I don't need much more meat than that oh here we go oops this one cutting beautifully however I want to point out that remember I made some marks that's how much the pressure the force from it has pushed my work back into this now I should still be okay with that because I don't need a huge amount of material but I am gonna push this back out Andrey clamp it if you really don't want it to move you can back it sometimes with something that will prevent that material from going and I could have done that and I have done it but it wasn't that important for this one so now I'm gonna go that a little bit farther right so now let's just see how that turns that's fine alright so now I'm gonna uh is that fine I feel like I could that's good enough okay so I am gonna use and where is it there's one of my alaura's Universal bits there we go that's the one this might be my all-time favorite lathe tool this is Anna loris CRT 20 it uses a carbide insert that is indexable so when you beat this insert up you can turn it to the next one and to the next one and on the other side so you get six cutting services per insert and you can adjust this to any angle you want or to a whole bunch of different angles it's fabulous when you're doing a lot of aesthetic work so here we are I'm gonna just done lay down oh right I've delayed it down to a specific a specific diameter and that's this diameter but what is that diameter and so I've got the thing I want to measure I've got my telescope engaged I can press the gauge as far as I can go I put it into the middle and there we go now that's it okay so I tighten up the gauge with it off angle and then I bring it into into level and that pressures the pieces yes there we go cool and that tells me the overall this thing isn't perfectly round that's fascinating but it's close enough yeah so that is the distance I'm going to be working with and that distance is 2.4 2.4 I'm gonna think that it's 2.4 Engineers big companies like nice round numbers and I'll wager that's exactly what that was so 2.4 is my goal so this is something that I do a lot when I want to come up with a critical measurement when I want to come up with a critical measurement for something like this and I want to cut it down to one here's what I'll do actually bring a tool in and knowing that I'm underneath under the you know at a comfortable place I'll just take off a little bit you see that yeah now you can see okay so I haven't moved I haven't moved the cross slide what happens is if I measure this and it says that it is three wait where am I at 2.4 that's where I'm at that's what I want to point for and right now this thing is that pretty much exactly three inches give or take 5,000 diameter then I set my cross feed to zero and I know that I need to take six hundred thousandths out of that point six inches Delrin is pretty soft and easy to machine so I'm gonna go in two passes of three hundred thousand my cool pose Delrin can be grippy and it also can create ribbons that get tied up and they start smacking you in the face yeah look at that yeah but you got to be gentle with Delrin it'll fight you jump out of it and try and bite into it too hard and jump right out of your Chuck nobody wants that all right so just to double-check I took 300 some odd thousand sound and now I am at 2.7 yep okay so I'm right in the zone there are many cases in which I would get more exactly about this but I don't need to be here so here we go I'm going to go all the way to 600 thousands up there that top number my cross slide is so precise right now it's a beautiful thing up here we go and I wouldn't use the auto-feed but again it would create these long ribbons and I don't like that every time you stop the ship breaks the ribbon breaks and you want that I don't want these presents fighting into me flying around now I'm just gonna face this because you hear that that's it being off by now there it's good okay let's change let's measure it out look at that 2.4 exactly okay 2.4 - that means that this should fit really nicely on there it's nice alright so again now I need to cut the second cut and I'm gonna use a different tool for this kind of do hmm about to do a little bit of some quick and dirty kind of special effects type of lathe where Kearse don't take it personal be upset with me machinists of the world because I'm working with Delrin I have a lot of latitude material attitude so what I need to do now is on the backside of this I need to actually let me get to UM here I've got this step right here that step and when I laid the outside of the interior of that step it's going to hopefully thread or fit pressure fit right into this ring on the bottom of the on the bottom of the microscope so I need to know the diameter of that like exactly how big that is and I also need to know where to start my plunge tool and I'm going to basically be using my thick cutoff tool to make this measurement and I'll show you how I do it so here's how this whole measurement thing works I got to figure out where to start my tool and I'm gonna do that with a DEP thing tool here so this is a pair of calipers and if you've handled a pair of calipers you know that not only do they measure outside diameters with the jaws then you're inside diameters with the little tails behind the jaws not super high precision but plenty good enough for commercial special effects work and then there is this this depth thing tool and that's what I'm going to use here I'm gonna put that up in here I didn't even need to know the measurement but I can set my lathe tool to be exactly that correct distance right so I've zeroed out my CNC over there i'm i dro and i need to get from four point to the measurement of this to one point five to the outside measurement the inside measurement of this and when I do the calculator four point two minus one point five two that tells me I need to take that really four point to my am I totally insane yes I am it's not four point two it's two point four this is how mistakes are made two point four minus 1 point 5 2 equals 0.88 that sounds more like it yeesh so now all I need to do is start up the Machine push my tool in until I get a reading on my dro of point zero eight eight and I know I'm at the right diameter so here we go yeah you see how it's gathering up there that's a classic Delrin move not too concerned point go free clothes okay okay that's one cuts clear away the material second cut you want to see this it's a nice cut whoops name good pull that out third cut just move this over a little bit like that I'll admit this isn't the most ideal use of a cut-off tool but I learned some bad habits and special effects and I'm not changing clear away some of this detritus come on looks like whoo Wow now wait a second looks like oh yeah okay I might still be able to get this to work yes yes I will yes I will okay so wow that worked amazingly well so my measurements were fabulous I cut in a little too far here and consequently I only ended up with this little tiny lip but that's about all I wanted so I made a very happy mistake here so I'm gonna just hit this on the bandsaw and we'll test fit it did I say bandsaw I didn't mean bandsaw I meant um belt sander so like I said I screwed up but apparently my screw up didn't bone me because I still was left with a little tiny lift and that lip turns out to be enough - oh that is that is a sexy story right there um that's kind of all I knew excuse me I burped there that's kind of all I need for this because I just needed to be strong enough to hold on to that and it is so I think this might be one of the fastest one day builds ever I think we might be able to put this bad boy back together and I think we can do it yeah right okay so is there a screw that holds you on there isn't me back in there and we have a top dead center long screw I'm recording right yes I am all right good the real trick is gonna be how do I get the shot I'm looking through this thing but we'll get to that oh right I need do I need I don't I don't need these nylon screws should be plenty so this comes in here like that and then those a little keeper there we go oh nice that's a nice piece of equipment you're a very nice piece of equipment okay tighten down and then I'm gonna get a yeah I'm going to pop this here like that and then I'm gonna tighten it in oh dude that is sexy and I am going to do some straining there so it doesn't so there's not too much weight sitting on that piece and I'm gonna move my fiber-optic power supply here we go there let's lower this down is that right now how about that hi Maggie okay so let's end to the power supply something pretty excited about this turn it on oh yeah and this should be oh right okay so I should have that set at that bottom yeah see oh my god okay so depth is I still need to go down about an inch that's tightened down you come down there then should be able to raise my steel whoo okay let's suggest that Oh baby oh that is gorgeous okay so let me get one side in focus oh wow okay yeah holy cow yeah I know you've got to see this so oh yeah we're getting it hey come on let's see if I can get this Oh almost almost almost oh my god it's so specific so yeah so now you can see yeah you can see just how close up this is one of my mini machinist screwdrivers oh yeah there's my fingernail oh and actually yeah here's my ooh yeah how about my how about my injured finger want to see that yeah you do Oh yummy okay so if I if I show some part of my fingerprint they are like that and I adjust the focus there we go and yeah I can actually adjust the light all over the place ooh Wow wait a minute there's zoom holy cow hold on oh my god come on ladies and gentlemen look at that okay that's officially oh I forgot that I'd ordered it with zoom so when i zoom in it actually it actually changes the focus so I gotta bring this over here oh come on come on yeah okay that is pretty that's pretty amazing you're welcome everybody thanks for looking at my dirty fingers here here's a there's a scar tissue on my finger Oh super cool so there you have it this is a beautiful ring light nicely attached to the bottom of my inspection microscope which has been sitting languishing for years really in storage and it's backing up and running again yeah well that um that might just be the fastest one day build I have ever done it's just a single single ring uh connecting two pieces and this is the kind of thing like you don't need to live anymore to do that you could 3d print that I mean it might take you a couple tries but 3d printing is exactly the perfect medium for those kind of tool mods and I do those kind of tool mods all the time on my tools attach things to those tools that makes them more useful and yeah I get a whole second life out of this I gotta figure out where in the shop that's gonna live because I'm not gonna take it apart and put it inside a closet again it's can live or you can look at stuff thanks for joining me for this one day build I'm Adam Savage this is destined comm I'll see you next time thanks for watching a hundred percent of whatever you just watched that's awesome we get to add that to our completion rate you deserve something you deserve a t-shirt for all your hard work follow the link below buy yourself a tested official t-shirt\n"