Looking at Printing under the Microscope

 I have a digital microscope which is useful for electronics repair. It can store photos or videos on a microSD card or connect to a computer. Sometimes I use it to look up close at other things besides electronics. 

When we got a piece of junk mail that was designed to look handwritten, I was able to use the microscope to see that it was actually printed. 

That looked very different from things printed on our color laser printer.

I also looked at different types of printing on a bourbon bottle from my flavor extract project. I could tell that the front label was ink jet printed. The rear label was press printed, and  some parts looked metallic. Some printing and laser engraving was done directly on the glass. And there were words and logos molded into the glass. That's a lot of customization that I normally don't notice.

Front label- Inkjet printed because each bottle has a unique number on it  

The label on the back is the same on all, thus press printed

Printing directly on glass

 My mom tries to look at leaves and insects with my microscope, but it's not very good for that. It's more difficult to take photos of things that are not flat or are moving.

Tomato sprout stem