There where a few issues with it:
- small photographic stage/area
- the LED lighting isn't very tall, so large objects could be darker near the top
- insects where mounted on the moving stage, so they would bounce around when the stage moved up and down
This version (as move have down ahead of me), will have the object on a seperate stage and the camera will move back and forth. This might allow photographs of 10cm sized objects.
BOM:
- 3mm MDF
- 300mm x 70mm x 35mm pine
- 300mm x 150xx x 15mm pine board
- NEMA17 stepping motor
- 3D printed parts: motor mount, ballscrew to stage adaptor, six feet
- laser cut parts
- four x M6 x 40mm bolts
- four x M4 x 15mm bolts
- ballscrew with bearing mounts
- Raspberry Pi 2
- Adafruit RPi Motor Hat
An early Design Spark Mechanical drawing of the macro stage mount:
the base is all cut out:
mostly assembled: