Just remember you don't need all the fancy equipment to start with.
The best metallurgical microscope you can afford and any of the stereo microscope offered by many suppliers. Some of the relatively inexpensive stereo microscopes have picture taking ability.
Any type of mounting press even the older ones where you have to swap the heating and cooling jackets. There are some mounting media that doesn't require a press to get you started.
A four roll wet paper for roughening in. A two or three wheel polishing table. If you have it you can work with a surface grinder or lapping machine to get the sample close to the polishing stage.
One thing that helps a lot is a wet metal abrasive cut off machine for getting the sample to size. Depend on what you examining look for a diamond cutoff saw. If and when you get one,just remember to to keep the media clean.
Start out simple and work into something big.
When I was Co-Op and for the first four years working in synthetic fiber plant we used Air Force surplus metallographs that used glass plates, converted to Graphics's back, and finally to Polaroid back while still using a carbon arc light. The mounting press was built in house. As mentioned above we used a dry power hacksaw and surface grinder, hand operated carriage, and then to the 4 roll wet paper. The three wheel polishing machine was purchased. It was constant speed and to change speed you went to the next wheel. When I retired the metallograph was Ziess with all the bells and whistles, the stereo microscope was also a Ziess. They were two automatic grinding and polishing machines. There were two diamond cutoff saws and a 14 inch awet abrasive sut off saw. 6 vibratory polishers. We had access to 3 electron microscopes, A Joel, a Cambridge, and one I don't recall the make. The Cambridge was nice as it would take a much larger sample than either of the other two.
