Machine vibration isolation schemes fail for all kinds of reasons, ranging from conceptual problems to bad hardware selections to poor installation. So, how can you tell if mechanical systems' isolators are working? A formal test is expensive and requires a lot of planning and coordination. Here, Vibrasure has produced a video on a easy way to tell if the isolators are working.

Everything has a natural frequency: the structural floor, the lab bench, the vibration-isolated system. Even the microscope itself has internal resonances; these are the reason why the instrument is sensitive to vibrations in the first place. And when it comes to vibration isolation, allowing these resonances line up (in frequency) is usually not what we want.