As part of my ongoing upgrade to my photographic stage I decided to add a magnifier on an arm to it.  My eyesight is ok, but when you are dealing with small electronic components it’s sometimes not enough and some artificial help can make all the difference.

I bought a cheap 100mm magnifying glass on a fold up stand.  I also scrounged up an old broken desk lamp (think Luxor Junior).  A little bit of hacking, some stainless steel, and a couple of hand peened rivets later and I had a good result.

The arm has a sleeve on the bottom (that was bent), so after straightening and adding a pin to the side of the photo stage, the whole device can be dropped on, or removed easily.

I left the power cord for the original lamp in the arm in case it looked like a good idea to add some lighting to the magnifier.  That shouldn’t be necessary with the new lighting on the stage, but it didn’t hurt to leave it for now.

You can also see the small steel rod and plate on the end of the arm that used to hold the lamp shade.  I has a par of holes on the plate that looked ideal to attach the magnifier to.

As you can see, the magnifying glass came in a plastic frame.  The original frame had three pieces that allowed it to fold up compact, so I removed the long pin (that you can see in the photo above) and discarded the other two parts of the frame.

Then I found a piece of sheet stainless steel about 1mm thick to make a bracket out of.  I cut the corners out with a hacksaw, then smoothed off the corners and edges with a file.  Finally I folded up three of the sides and drilled holes to allow the rod to slide through and pin the magnifier into the bracket.  It’s all sized to hold the magnifier very tight and secure.  I didn’t want any play in the connection.

Once the bracket was complete, I used the rod and plate from the arm to mark up and then drill two holes in the back of the bracket.  To join the two, I considered using bolts, but decided that a permanent, strong join was the nicest option.  So I made some rivets from 3mm thick steel nails and hand peened them to connect the bracket to the plate.  I am really happy with the result.  It is very strong (stronger than the plate probably!) and looks clean and neat.

So this is finished arm mounted on the photo stage.  I can easily pull it across when I need to get a better view of what I am working on, but it’s never in the way when not in use, like a free standing magnifier would be.

Total cost: about $10.00 for the magnifier, all the other components were rubbish or scrap that I repurposed.  And it took about three hours to gather the materials and make.  Buying an equivalent device retail would cost me in excess of $100, so I think that this was a worthwhile project.