homepage\index

Science is one area most people have some interest in... Pictured here is a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) which is manufactured and designed by RJ Lee Group, Inc in Monroeville, Pa. This is a project I worked on in the late 80's and basically started as a garage project and by the early 90's we began production. This instrument is known as the Personal SEM and is a PC based instrument which anyone can use. Heck, I've seen 6 yr. olds use this instrument!

Quite a bit of credit for the concept and design of this instrument goes to Hank Lentz. We consider him the "Grandfather" of the project and a damn fine engineer as well.

This is an image from the Personal SEM and is a picture of a Spider's fangs. This is a relatively low magnification image, but it looks neat! Biological samples are very eye catching, especially insects...

This image is of an X-Ray Map taken from the Personal SEM. The SEM can also give you chemical information as well as images. This is a very useful tool when you want to know what your sample is made of.

This is a picture from our R&D lab back around 1990 before the Personal SEM was a product. The column pictured here was taken from an old ETEC SEM, but the computer control electronics and software were the first cut of what we use today in our manufactured system. Back then we called this the Phoenix project, and it's kind of funny now seeing Hank has moved to Phoenix... The computer controlled software console was named 'Rebel1', but that name has changed too. As you can see from the picture this was literally a 'back room' or 'garage' build project, but it was fun!