Project 1

Market / Customer: Aerospace, for an international aerospace company.

Product / Application: High resolution telescope for deployment in earth orbiting satellite.

Engineering Challenges: The specifications required that the lens assembly survive the high g-force encountered during the satellite launch and meet stringent imaging performance specification over a wide operating temperature range. Opto-Alignment Technology successfully developed a resilient soft mounting technology that could resist severe environmental conditions, a temperature compensating feature to maintain performance over a wide temperature range and a range of custom alignment and measurement tools and fixtures.

Assembly / Test Challenges: Stringent assembly requirements included optical element alignment tolerances of +/- 1 microns TIR and lens element gap spacing tolerances of 1 micron.

Project 2

Market / Customer: Aerospace, for a NASA subsidiary company.

Product / Application: Design, fabricate and assemble a spectroscopy optical system for the Rover K-9 space exploration of Mars.

Engineering Challenges: Beam diversion optical assembly and opto-mechanical engineering had to meet stringent imaging specifications over a wide operational temperature range. Application required careful selection and qualification of lightweight components and bonding materials.

Assembly / Test Challenges: This optical assembly demanded stringent optical element alignments of better then ±2 microns TIR, with element air gap spacings controlled to ±1 micron. This assembly also required the design and development of a variety of precision assembly tools and fixtures.

Project 3

Market / Customer: Defense, for the US Army.

Product / Application: Design and development of a prototype pair of next generation night vision binoculars for battlefield deployment.

Engineering Challenges: Because of the harsh environmental conditions in which military products commonly operate, their opto-mechanical designs required a thorough understanding of the behavior of materials and structures under environmentally stressful conditions.

Assembly / Test Challenges: This program required the design and fabrication of numerous custom tools and fixtures for the metrology and precision alignment of various components as well as for the final testing.

Project 4

Market / Customer: Commercial and Industrial, wide format HDTV lens supplier to a major consumer electronics manufacturer.

Product / Application: Opto-Alignment Technology was required to analyze and troubleshoot the first article of a new generation of HDTV lens supplied by the customer.

Engineering Challenges: This lens assembly incorporated numerous cylindrical and aspherical optical elements, which are recognized as difficult to align. Opto-Alignment Technology was required to develop systematic and repeatable manufacturing processes and assembly methods which would meet the cylindrical lenses’ axial alignment tolerance of ±2 arc second and their X&Y alignment tolerances of ±5 microns. We also developed other methods for the critical alignment and axial placement of the aspherical lenses.

Assembly / Test Challenges: Numerous custom alignment and test fixtures were devised and deployed. Rotary encoders enabled marking precision rotational measurements to high precision and accuracy.

Project 5

Market / Customer: Research and development, for a major university.

Product / Application: 12.0″ (305.0mm) diameter, 18″ (475.2mm) tall telescope assembly for a proprietary R & D project.

Assembly / Test Challenges: Lens element alignment tolerances were ±5 microns TIR with element air space gaps of ±10 microns. With our precision machining capability, Opto-Alignment Technology was able to hold all element air spacing gaps to within ±5 microns (half of specification), an impressive performance given the relatively large size of this assembly.