Dave Mitchell's DigitalMicrograph™ Scripting Website

Function

Creates a palette to control the microscope from within DigitalMicrograph. This script enables the user to control the fluorescent screen, spot size, focus, brightness mag, image shift and stage shift (only useful at low mag). Designed for older JEOL TEMs with serial control.

Version

version:20130518, v2.0

Author

D. R. G. Mitchell.

Acknowledgements

Comments

This script is a revised version of the 2010F Control Palette script (also available here). It is designed to work with older JEOL microscopes which use serial communication between the microscope and DigitalMicrograph. This includes instruments like: 2000FX, 2000EX, 2010, 3000, 3010 etc (including the F variants). Such microscopes have a built-in keyboard for entering microscope control commands. However, some of these instruments had FasTEM installed and this software is not compatible with such instruments. Newer vintage JEOL TEMs (1400, 2100, 2200, ARM etc) use ethernet communication, and again this script is not compatible with those instruments. The TEM Control script (also available here) is a generic script which should work with those and other modern TEMs from FEI etc.

In order for DigitalMicrograph to talk to the microscope, the TEM must be in external control mode (type EXT 1 at the TEM's internal keyboard). To return the microscope to internal control type EXT 0. Stage control is very coarse and so stage translations will only be useful at low magnification. If you have a GIF and wish to control the slit and TV camera insertion, use the 2010F Control Palette script which has this functionality. Although that script is designed for the 2010F, it should work with any of the serial controlled JEOL TEMs mentioned above.

System Requirements

Tested on GMS 2 but should work on GMS 1.x

Known Issues

Will only work on serial control JEOL microscopes which DO NOT have FasTEM installed. It has been tested on a 2010 only, and some JEOL's (eg 4000 series) are a bit different. Try it and see if it works on your instrument - it will not do any harm if it does not. The Eucentric Focus feature is not very reproducible. While it is easy to capture the current microscope focus, resetting it is difficult since one can only set the coarse focus (without putting the instrument into free lens mode). This works fine at magnifications above about 80kx, where only the coarse focus is changed, but at lower mags both the coarse and fine focus change, but only the coarse focus is reset with this control. When pressing the Eucentric Focus button, a difference value (difference between current and target value) will be shown in the Results window. Keep pressing the Eucentric Focus button until the reported difference value reaches a minimum. At and above 80kx it should get there first time - or at least get close.

Supported

Yes.

Included Files

Script File.

Source Code