Product category:
Materials and components
News Release from: Optical Surfaces | Subject: Off-axis paraboloids
Edited by the Engineeringtalk Editorial
Team on 05 April 2005
Off-axis parabolic mirrors cut size and
mass
Optical Surfaces has gained universal recognition as a leading international supplier of high precision aspheric optical components and systems.
Drawing on over 40 years of international design and manufacturing experience, Optical Surfaces has gained universal recognition as a leading international supplier of high precision aspheric optical components and systems to assist customers across a wide range of research and test applications Parabolic mirrors are the most common type of aspherical mirrors used in optical instruments
This article was originally published on Engineeringtalk on 30 Dec 2003 at 8.00am (UK)
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Peak performance from off-axis paraboloids
Optical Surfaces has considerable experience of supplying off-axis paraboloids with diameters up to 600mm, surface accuracy of up to lambda/20 and off-axis angles up to 25 degrees.
Read all about high precision off-axis paraboloids
New technical datasheets bring together over 35 years experience in the design and production of high precision off-axis paraboloids.
They are free from spherical aberrations, and thus focus a parallel beam to a point or a point source to infinity.
Off-axis parabolic mirrors provide an unobstructed aperture allowing complete access to the focal region as well as reducing the size and minimising the weight of a design.
They are especially suitable for broadband or multiple wavelength applications due to their completely achromatic performance.
All together these advantages produce a cost-effective solution for many optical design problems with no compromise in performance.
Because of these notable advantages, Optical Surfaces regularly supplies high precision off-axis parabolic mirrors for high power laser focusing, focusing astronomical objects and producing collimated reference wavefronts.
Other applications that have benefited from Optical Surfaces' high precision off-axis parabolic mirrors include beam expansion, MTF measurement, MRTD testing and bore sight alignment for missile guidance systems.
Typical specifications achieved by Optical Surfaces' highly experienced and skilled team of engineers and craftsmen include off-axis parabolic mirrors up to 600mm in diameter with surface accuracies to lambda/20 p-v depending on off-axis angles.
With proprietary polishing techniques Optical Surfaces can, depending on the surface accuracy required, achieve the natural limit to the off-axis angle of around 25-30 degrees and surface micro-roughness on aspherics of around 1nm RMS.
A range of coatings is available for standard and custom components from metallic with or without protective overcoat to multilayer dielectrics and ultra hard coatings.
Production approved to ISO9001-2000 the quality of off-axis paraboloids from Optical Surfaces.
is ensured both by long experience and a range of interferometric and surface test measurements on all optics and optical systems leaving the factory.
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