That sounds like a pretty standard STM (scanning tunneling microscope). They had a couple of those at the university I went to. We had to cut the tips ourselves

That sounds like a pretty standard STM (scanning tunneling microscope). They had a couple of those at the university I went to. We had to cut the tips ourselves with pliers, which was a quite annoying process as you couldn't see if they were sharp enough by eye (the tips were supposed to be only a few atoms thick). They seemed pretty cheap to construct, but they are not the same thing as a scanning electron microscope.