Mirrors and Lenses for Microwave and TeraHertz operation

Mirrors

Our DMG 50V High speed CNC milling machine, controlled by a TNC430 CNC controller, allow us to cut large mirror surfaces to very high accuracy .

DMG 50V High Speed Milling Machine

Our internally developed Visual Basic application produces conic section (Elliptical, Parabolic, Hyperboloidal) code from a specification of input and output radii of curvature and beam bend angle

Output screen look like:

Using Pro/E CAD and natively-linked Granite-extended EdgeCAM CAM software from Pathtrace Ltd, we can machine fully aspheric surfaces, from {x,y,z} co-ordinate data sets, giving QO systems designers, for example, the possibility of correcting aberations in large spherical primary mirrors with shaped secondary mirrors.

Fully Aspheric surface being cut with 6 MB of NC code

Our Huron can also cut mirrors:

The photo showns a large off-axis ellipsoidal mirror of revolution being machined on our Huron CNC milling machine.

RMS accuracies in the 5/10u region are possible and surface can be scanned by a CIM machine and analysed by a MATHEMATICA Program to confirm that desired tolerances have been met.

LENSES

Mirrors are cut in HDPE Teflon and TPX using our Hardinge CNC lathe. Surfaces can be simple spherical forms, or more complex aspheric surfaces designed using a lapsed-phase method coded into our Gaussian Beam-Mode CAD program.

Richard Wylde - Thomas Keating Ltd - This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it