- 1700s-era vacuum techniques—low-vapor-pressure waxes, glass-blowing, and reusable solder-sealed joints—are still viable for DIY high-vacuum work, but their labor-intensive nature keeps them out of commercial use today.  
- A phone-screen-based optical positioning system achieves 10–30 nm RMS error by exploiting sub-pixel phase encoding; a companion paper on a precision substrate pushes the same principle below 1 nm.  
- The Anoto/FlyPen dot-pattern method is more bit-efficient than the grid-based phase-encoding scheme, yet both ultimately rely on Fourier convolution to extract nanometer-scale displacement from high-frequency spatial data.  
- An untested proposal in Dercuano (https://dercuano.github.io/notes/starfield-servo.html) outlines how to extend depth-of-field and precision for such optical servo systems.  
- A new open-source nanofabrication roadmap (https://github.com/nffm/roadmap) aims to deliver low-cost micro- and nano-positioners and lithography tools, with the author planning to fund it via a day job while keeping the designs open.  
- Community discussion questions whether open-source hardware creators inevitably “age out” of altruistic pricing, noting that a $20–28 k DIY AFM could still undercut commercial rates of $300/hr for imaging services.  
- A 1997 aberration-correction demo in electron microscopy (https://www.microscopy.org/images/posters/Rempfer.pdf) shows dramatic image improvement on a fine-mesh screen, underscoring the value of open, decades-old techniques.