Flexible manufacturing of large aspheres for VLTs Optical Tube Assemblies
conference paper
For the ESO Very Large Telescope, TNO is making four Optical Tube Assemblies for the Four Laser Guide Star Facility. Each OTA is a large 20x Galilean beam expander, which expands a ∅15 mm, 25W CW 589 nm input laser beam to a steerable ∅300 mm output. The L2 lens is a ∅380 conical convex lens with a radius of curvature of 637 mm and conic constant k = -0.4776. This paper describes the flexible manufacturing technique that TNO applies to make these kind of optics. With the combination of deterministic polishing and the NANOMEFOS measurement machine, these optics can be manufactured quickly and efficiently, without the need for a dedicated test setup. Final performance testing of the OTA validates all the intermediate steps in the flexible process value chain.
TNO Identifier
954244
ISSN
0277786X
ISBN
9780819487
Publisher
SPIE
Article nr.
81261D
Source title
Proceedings Optical Manufacturing and Testing IX, 22-24 August 2011, San Diego, CA, USA
Collation
10 p.
Place of publication
Washington DC, USA
Files
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