Welcome to the World of Grayfield Optical Inc.
SeeNano optical microscopes: White light source, no oil immersion, variable extended depth-of-field, color contrast.
Important News: New Microscope Systems available from November, 2019.
Update: January 31, 2020
We will start business again in March 2020, after a long period of redesigning and updating our series of microscopes, we are finally making headway towards the relaunch. This project has been hampered by multiple delays for various reasons including the death of the original inventor - Kurt Olbrich - and numerous challenges in the redesign and updating of our microscopes to make them state-of-the-art. Finally, the uncertainties caused by Brexit have also had an effect on our supply chain. On the positive side, the extra time has allowed us to further improve the design to make a new modular system that can be expanded from basic to top model.
We can however now start demonstrating our microscope systems to interested customers in our facilities in Hamburg, Germany. You can use the form below to apply for an appointment.
Please note that we are a small company and need to charge a nominal (offsettable) charge of $400 (£300 or 350 €) payable in advance to each group, to cover our own costs (hotel, travel costs, setting up equipment for specific demonstrations, etc). It is payable, once we agree on an appointment date. As of October 21, we have halfed this charge from $800 to $400.
This fee does include collection and return to Hamburg airport/rail station/hotel in the (north) Hamburg area, etc. Our manufacturing facilities are located north of Hamburg (Germany) near the airport.
This fee will be fully offset from your invoice, should you purchase a microscope system from us. This fee has to be paid in advance and is otherwise only refundable if you cancel your visit at least three days prior to your appointment.
In the past, we had a lot of people making appointments to come and test our optical microscooes that were simply curious and had no real interest or even funding for purchasing our equipment. While we understand that our microscopes are unique and that many people want to see this for themselves, such visitors have incurrred high costs to us both financially and timewise in the past. As our team is located in both Hamburg and Cologne, we incurr travel and hotel costs ourselves with each visit and these costs have to be recovered in the end through higher prices to our legitimate customers, which made our microscopes unnecessarily expensive.
As the price of our microscope systems has always been an important issue, we have been working hard in the past three years to redesign our systems to make them better and more affordable while maintaining the quality. It therefore made sense to introduce this nominal charge in order to cover our costs for each potential customer. We thank you for your understanding.
Our previous range of Ergonom microscopes, were high quality optical microscopes, yet were lacking the integration with modern electronics. Our engineers in Hamburg, have been creative in integrating the latest electronics to intelligently control both the stage and the objectives allowing for fully computer-controlled operation. For non-biological applications, it is possible to auto-scan the entire object, for example a computer wafer, resulting in a massive gigapixel image with incredible resolution in full color. A working system for this purpose, has already been delivered to a major university in the UK.
Our new microscopes are modular. You can start with the lab system and upgrade it up to a top research microscope.
We previously planned to release two versions, Lab and Pro and that has been changed to one scalable system. Add accessory modules as needed to upgrade for more features.
Instead of a turret, the objectives will be mounted on a horizontal rail system and can be self-centering. You are looking at a sample and want to switch to a higher magnification, the objective is automatically changed and adjusted so that your field of view matches what you were looking at before.
Automated nano-positioning systems will be available to precisely move the slide.
More details will be announced in November when sales will begin.
Pre-orders can be made from October 14 on this website.
Our SeeNano microscopes are now will have all the optical capabilities of the previous Ergonom series, while adding fluorescence capabilities and realistic pricing.
Introduction
Unsatisfied with the capabilities of existing light microscopes, it was decided to investigate why the resolution, color contrast and depth of field is so limited. This research led to the discovery of a unique new way of building microscopes which no longer suffered many of the constraints of existing optical theory. We found that by using a different approach to optics and a new mathematical approach, we could build microscopes with a large "cylinder of sharpness" (depth of field) and a true resolution of 100nm, while maintaining full contour sharpness and true colors without the need for staining, oil immersion, etc. This Grayfield Lens System is the basis of all our future optical systems.
The GLS technology has also been used to develop objectives for extreme image reduction, a quantum leap in the nano lithography of critical dimensions that can be used for computer wafer production.
