Sam has a video where (among other things) he covers some of the ancillary equipment needed to run the electron microscope. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJX

Sam has a video where (among other things) he covers some of the ancillary equipment needed to run the electron microscope. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJXio_jpc_Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJXio_jpc_Y He doesn't mention costs directly, but this video covers the facts that they had to do some additional plumbing work, additional electrical work, there's a big-ass voltage transformer he had to acquire, etc. I also wonder how much the shipping costs were on that machine. Unless they were able to pick it up locally with a rented van, shipping alone might have exceeded the cost of the unit. Shipping pallets of fragile gear with specialized handling constraints is not cheap. My high school turned down a free electron microscope (a college was getting rid of it, I think) for reasons such as this. Even if you can get the microscope for free there are other costs, space requirements, etc.