Colleagues:
Hey! It’s been one Heck-of-a-Year…
…horrible images, tricky windows, cracked laser rods, soft adhesive, savvy
clients, a challenge from the nanoradian and writing a book-and-a-half.
What’ll it be next?
Our industry is terrific fun. Optics is an art that was just
meant to work, until it doesn’t. Then the solution is almost always
mechanical: a longer stroke on the focus mechanism; find a way to install
a “corrector” lens; fold the system here or there; find a new
adhesive; brace the objective doublet; stiffen the cold finger, control-grind
and polish the edges, etc.
And that’s all as it should be. Once the
optical designer finishes his design it’s virtually impossible to improve it.
If that were not true the optical designer would probably not stay employed at
the firm. All deviations from the prescription are the mechanical
engineer’s contribution. Poor performance is therefore a
mechanical problem; something is improperly located, dimensioned or deformed
and the solution is also mechanical, correcting the mechanical engineer’s
positional or dimensional specifications or stiffen the structure.
The errors are almost always detected after the system is assembled and that’s
what makes it so much fun. The mechanical engineer has to think ahead and
analyze ahead to avoid the problems in that first assembly.
And that’s why we have a conference in San Diego
this August with SPIE, to share with
each other and our colleagues the discoveries and methods for making optical
systems work in spite of it all!
Attached is the Conference
Announcement. Just click on “submit
an abstract” on the bottom of the second
page to reserve your position in the Program.
Look out 2017, here we come!
Al H.
12-28-16