For a few dollars you can use instrumentation that costs several hundred thousand dollars

Most of the costs of the microscope are paid for by core funding, users actually pay for less than 50% of the real cost of running the microscopes and none of the cost of acquiring them

For the price of buying your own confocal you could use the LMCF microscopes for 40 hours per month for more than 50 years, plus you don't have to do maintenance and repairs.