BHS/U_LED Illuminator System for 100W BH2 Scopes
The BHS/U_LED System for the BHS scope is still under development.
Check this page frequently for updates on project status and availability!
If you are an avid DIYer, click here to see assembly instructions for the Mohawk Dimmer Box.
Click here to see an overview of the BHS/U_LED Illuminator for the BHS/BHSP/BHSU.
Click here to see the available BHS/U_LED options.
Click here to see the specifications of the BHS/U_LED Illuminator.
Click here to see the prices for the BHS/U_LED Illuminator.
Click here to see the instructions for the BHS/U_LED Illuminator.
Click here to see DIY assembly instructions for the Mohawk Dimmer Box.
So, cut me a little slack here! I quickly threw together these parts to show what the BHS/U_LED may look like. I didn’t notice that the heatsink is improperly oriented until I posted these images. I do of course know that the fins should be vertically oriented for best convective cooling!
BHS/U_LED Illuminator
The BHT/U_LED Illuminator from the Empire of Dirt Workshop is a low-cost LED-based replacement for the Olympus TBD halogen lamphouse used on the Olympus BHS/BHSP/BHSU compound microscopes in the Olympus BH2 line. The BHS/U_LED was designed to provide excellent illumination and field uniformity, while maintaining the Köhler performance the BH2 was engineered to provide. The BHS/U_LED is passively cooled, so there are no fans to degrade long-term reliability or to cause photo-blurring vibration.
If you’re in the market for an LED upgrade for your BHS/BHSP/BHSU, please contact me. I can set you up with an excellent performing BHS/U_LED Illuminator, ready to go, for something like a third to half the cost of the commercially available LED solutions. If you’re handy with a soldering iron and wish to assemble parts of this yourself, you can save even more money. If you wish to design your own drive electronics, I can provide just the stand-alone lamphouse.
Compatibility
The BHS/U_LED Illuminator is compatible with the BHS/BHSP/BHSU compound scopes in the Olympus BH2 series. The BHS/U_LED can be installed without any modification to the scope, thereby allowing the scope to be easily reverted back to halogen lighting in the future. The BHS/U_LED Illuminator system utilizes a separate dimmer box (i.e., the Mohawk Box), to provide pulse-width modulated dimming for the LED, and a standard wall-wart style power supply. This three-piece design allows the BST/U_LED Illuminator to be installed onto any 100W BH2 scope, whether the integral halogen lighting is functional or not.
Options
The BHS/U_LED is available in cool or neutral color temperatures (with the neutral versions being a good match to the stock halogen lighting). The wiring on the BHS/U_LED can be configured for left-side or right-side Mohawk Box placement.
Neutral Density Filter
The BHS/U_LED comes with an ND16 neutral density filter, for low-power viewing. This filter simply slips over the field exit lens (with or without a 45mm filter installed in the filter recess), to obtain four exposure stops of light reduction.
Specifications
The BHS/U_LED Lamphouse is made of heat-resistant ABS plastic.
The lamphouse can be ordered with the 12″ cable exiting either the left or right side of the scope, to allow for optimal cable routing with the Mohawk Dimmer Box placed at the left or right side of the scope.
Prices
TBD
A Little Background
As an Electrical Engineer by day, and a “wanna-be” microscope technician on weekends, the development of the BHT/U_LED and BHS/U_LED Illuminators for the BH2 was probably inevitable. However, proudly considering myself a card-carrying, halogen-purist snob, I put this project off for about as long as I possibly could. Why the procrastination? In my mind, “the BH2 should use halogen lighting, as God intended”. The very thought of an LED illuminator on a BH2 felt like blasphemy to me.
Then one day out of the blue, a microscope friend in Australia contacted me and said he wanted to send me one of his LED illuminators he had made for the BH2 scope, absolutely free of charge (and international shipping is not cheap!). Of course, the Halogen Grinch in me recoiled at the thought of an LED on a BH2, but nonetheless I accepted James’ generous offer. The package soon arrived from Australia, and it contained a crude, hand-made illuminator with an LED screwed onto the top of a hand-cut aluminum block functioning as the heatsink. I lined up the wooden alignment pins that James has meticulously sanded to fit and plugged it into my old “Crash Test Dummy” BHTU scope, using the instructions James had provided. Then I took a deep breath and fired it up.
I must confess, I was immediately and totally blown away. What I saw was totally unlike my prior experiences with LED microscopes from just a few years earlier, and this Halogen Grinch’s heart grew three sizes that day! Crash Test Dummy was making BEAUTIFUL images with the hand-made LED rig that James had sent me. The gift James sent came at a really good time, since the year prior (2025), Evident had announced the discontinuation of the LS20H (5S-119) halogen lamphouse, and supplies of the LS20H on the used markets were quickly drying up.
A huge thanks go to James Indsto, for growing this Grinch’s heart. Somehow, the small hoard of LS20H lamphouses that I have been slowly accumulating ever since Evident’s announcement of the discontinuation doesn’t seem so important anymore. I plan to use LED lighting on my main BH2 scope from now on. Why should I put up with the 200-hour lifetime of the ESB lamp? Why should I put up with a color temperature that varies with every setting of the intensity slide? Why should I put up with all of that heat?
The images below were taken with a 3W neutral BHT/U_LED.
Click the images below to open the full resolution images in a separate window.
Human Cardiac Muscle
Human Scalp
Human Bone Tissue
