Excitation_alignment

Excitation arm alignment is critical for mesoSPIM performance. It is done in several steps, described below.

Initial mechanical alignment

During the building process, the excitation arm assembly must be aligned to the hole pattern of the base breadboard, which serves as a global reference. This can be done, for example, by screwing two steel posts (2x Thorlabs TR200/M) into the breadboard and pushing the excitation cage rods against them (idea credit: Robert Zinzen, MDC Berlin), see photo:

Checkpoints:

• no gap between the TR200/M posts and the excitation cage rods,
• the detection objective in the center between the excitation objectives,
• distance d between excitation objective mounts is approximately 75 mm,
• the excitation cage is securely clamped to the breadboard.