Boom microscopes have an advantage over normal stereoscopic microscopes on upright stands. The boom mount allows the microscope to have greater flexibility and ability to move, retract, or swing out of the way of the workspace when not in use. The boom stand also gives greater working area and can be combined with Barlow objective lens to give greater microscope working distances which are useful when using a soldering iron or other tools under the microscope.

Uses for boom mounted microscopes vary greatly but common applications involve circuit board repair work, surface mount device or SMD, repair and inspection, forensic document examination, art restoration and document restoration, firearms engraving and other engraving tasks, fossil preparation and restoration, watch repair, and any repair or inspection of small objects.

There are several styles of boom stands to mount the microscope heads on. The most common is the standard style. It is basic and cheap yet is a highly reliable microscope boom stand. For higher grade boom stands, you can mount the stereoscopic microscope head to a double arm boom stand that has a counterweight for added microscope stability. This may be useful if mounting a large microscope photography system on the trinocular photo port of the microscope head. The counterweight and the heavier style of the boom stand provides more stability and less undesired microscope camera movement.

Some also provides an articulating arm boom stand that allows the microscope head to be easily retracted or pulled into position. The spring loaded articulating boom stand is very flexible and is a favorite for those needing more table work space. It also has a mobile floor stand capable of rolling on the floor. It comes with an articulating boom arm for maximum flexibility. This type of floor stand is often used for medical and dental applications.

There are brands that have a full line of different types of stereoscopic microscope heads to mount on the boom stands. You can select from stereo zoom microscopes, fixed magnification stereomicroscopes, binocular stereoscopic microscope heads, and trinocular photography stereo microscope heads.

Zoom microscopes are the preferred optical solution if your budget can afford them. The zoom stereoscopic microscopes allow continuously variable magnification over a full zoom range. The zoom magnification ranges can vary, with our higher grade microscope heads having larger zoom ratios. The fixed magnification heads have a turret which is turned to change magnification, but their cheap price makes them attractive for some types of applications.

The binocular stereoscopic microscopes simply have two eyepieces for viewing the microscopic specimen. And the trinocular microscopes have the benefit of the photography port that can be used to connect a video microscope camera, a still digital or film camera, or a USB computer connected microscope camera.

The line of boom mounted microscopes are typically illuminated by either fluorescent ring lights or by fiber optic illuminators. The fluorescent ring lights are cheap, but provide good reasonable lighting. They mount to the bottom of the microscope head and evenly illuminate the specimen. The fiber optic illuminators can be either mounted to the bottom of the microscope head and come in a ring fiber optic style, or they can be a dual pipe gooseneck fiber optic system. The dual fiber pipe system has two fiber optic bundles of light that can be pointed to the specimen from different angles. The best microscope illuminator is usually going to be the fiber optic ring lights mounted to the bottom of the microscope head. They provide variable intensity illumination for the boom mounted microscope system, which is something that fluorescent lights can not do.