I've made a small test flag and printed it with a lug to mount it on the Z Axis with. The "flag" was flipped around so that it was near the contact point - much handier when you're trying to watch everything through a microscope.
I can certainly see movement that happens over a micron or less. This is done by bouncing the probe 10μm. If it twitches as it gets to the bottom of the movement, then you're contacting the slide. If it doesn't, drop it by a micron and bounce again. It makes for a boring video.
There's a bit of tidying up to do, making things align in the microscope's field of view, making sure there are more straight edges when you're looking for motion etc. But I might be on to something.
Options might include making it into a proper indicator gauge, and being clever with capacitors or inductors to give electrical feedback. For now, just watching the indicator arm twitch gets me +/- 1 micron.
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