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Welcome to Gemological Microscope website. Here, you will find our selection of microscopes useful for gemologists. What is a gemological microscope? The study of gemology requires a tool for properly viewing the gemstones. This tool is the gemological microscope. It is a low power stereoscopic optical device capable of viewing the surfaces of gemstones as well as the interior of translucent and semi-translucent stones such as diamonds and rubies.
A high power microscope is not useful for gemstone grading, as it sees far beyond what magnification the naked human eye can see. A low power microscope set at 10x magnification is about the maximum magnification used for grading most gemstones, such as diamonds. A gemology microscope should also have a darkfield condenser and a jewelry clip. The jewelry clip is for holding the gemstone over the darkfield condenser.
A darkfield condenser in a low power stereo microscope is used to produce a brightly illuminated specimen over a black background. The illumination source comes from below in the microscope base, and is often a high intensity halogen bulb. A darkfield condenser is installed on the microscope stage, in the light path. This special condenser mirrors the light so it illuminates the gemstone specimen from the sides instead of from the bottom. This provides clear and brilliant illumination of the gemstone.
The center of the darkfield condenser is a black disc, blocking out all transmitted illumination from directly below the gemstone. Fluorescent light is one type of illumination that is common in stereoscopic microscopes. The gemological microscope should never have this illumination method since the fluorescence light creates a spectrum that doesn’t fully show true colors, especially red. Our gemological microscopes have high intensity halogen bulbs. The stereo microscope heads can come as binocular or with photography capable trinocular heads.
We sell a full range of digital USB computer connected microscope cameras for capturing digital still images of gemstones. This creates the black background. If you are a gemologist searching for the proper gemological microscope for your lab, we recommend you contact us for a recommendation.