Unless you have selected a warm stage or biological peltier stage you will be mounting your stage to an upright microscope as either a standard brightfield microscope or part of a Raman or FTIR system.

Linkam Heating stages attach to the substage of the microscope in place of the XY table by means of special clamps. The clamps are specific to the make and model of the microscope.

Setting up the Microscope for Thermal Microscopy

In order to achieve the best possible image when using your microscope with a hotstage, it is very important to understand the way a microscope works. It is essential to understand which optics are required for specific observation techniques. Fundamentally, with hotstages, you will be limited to which objective lenses you can use by the working distance. Objective Lens Working Distance is the vertical distance from the point where the sample is in focus to the front lens of the objective. (see diagram opposite.) Hotstages require long working distance lenses because the sample is isolated from the lens by the hotstage chamber. In brightfield microscopy, if you want to pass light through your sample then you will need to focus the condenser as well as the objective lens. The condenser therefore also has a specific working distance. It is unlikely that the standard condenser lens on your microscope will have suffiicient working distance for hotstage work. Linkam manufactures a range of long working distance condenser lenses for a variety of condensers (see below). The image opposite shows the minimum objective lens and condenser lens working distances for a THMS600 stage.

You can learn more about microscopy at the excellent 'Molecular Expressions' website. There is a wealth of information stretching from the basic mechanics of the microscope to sophisticated imaging techniques. There is even a section about the history of microscopy.