GIGAmacro

GIGAmacro helps solve a challenge many museums, manufacturers, researchers, and educators face. That is, how to image small subjects with enough detail and resolution to make good decisions AND how to share those images online with others. GIGAmacro is is a subsidiary of Four Chambers Studio LLC (FCS). FCS was founded in 2000 with GIGAmacro’s first product appearing in 2010. We’re located close to the beautiful wine country of the Napa Valley, CA. Despite being surrounded by beauty and wine, we still manage to get work done.

GIGAmacro started, as many great ideas do, in the garage and spare bedroom of its founder. Gene Cooper realized that a unique combination of technologies could solve a problem that many museums, institutions, researchers, educators, and scientists have wrestled with for years – how to digitize subjects and have sufficient resolution to enable new research and discoveries. Having solved that, the question was how to share the imagery and collections with the rest of the world. The prototype to see if it was possible was produced in just a month or two. Refining it into a product capable of being used by a wide variety of disciplines took a bit longer. Over the years, the team at GIGAmacro has developed the technology into set of products, techniques, software, and knowledge that benefits people around the world.

Use Cases & Applications

• Entomology
  Batch digitize collections, microscope slides, pinned specimens, and share your collection online with the public. Allow researchers remote access to your collection and engage the public with incredibly detailed explorable images.
• Geology
  Geologic specimens often are too big or bulky to fit under a microscope and even if they do, only a tiny portion of the subject is in focus at any given time. When we image specimens with GIGAmacro Magnify2, we can then uncover incredible detail at the microscopic level and bring a high depth of field / focal depth to view. That image can then be shared with colleagues, compared with other specimens, used in classroom curricula, analyzed, measured, and annotated online.
• PCB Manufacturing
  Ideal for failure analysis, metrology, parts inspection, documentation, research, and development. Use the GIGAmacro Magnify2 to batch digitize parts from small to large in a single system. Custom builds are available for specialized applications.
• Cultural Artifacts
  Use the GIGAmacro system for preservation, conservation, and documentation of important artifacts. Often details are too difficult to see or examine under a microscope. Using the system, complex three dimensional artifacts can be explored, examined, and shared online.

Custom Builds Service

We can produce custom systems and builds for clients. Examples include custom enclosures, larger imaging stages, custom templates, and customized software programming. Custom systems can be based on modifications to our Magnify2, or can be built from scratch.