Wednesday, 26 March 2014

optics - Is it practical to hand grind a convex parabolic or hyperbolic mirror?

If you're asking in regards to testing methods, as indicated in the comments, the simplest setup for interferometrically testing convex conic mirrors is with a Hindle Test, shown below in a figure from the University of Arizona College of Optical Sciences. This setup can achieve a perfect null after adjusting the reference sphere to be focused at the focus of the test optic - the catch is that the sphere needs to be larger than your test optic, with a hole through it as shown.



Hindle Test



In industry, it is much more common to use an aperture-stitching interferometer for small quantities of non-research-level optics. Larger, more precise, and higher quantity aspheres may use a set of nulling optics, or a diffractive/holographic element to create a null wavefront, as covered in better detail in the link below, which is a slideset from U of Arizona's optical fabrication and testing course.



http://fp.optics.arizona.edu/jcwyant/Short_Courses/SIRA/7-TestingAsphericSurfaces.pdf



If you're feeling especially ambitious, there is a concept for measuring surface form of a mirror by displaying points on a monitor and using an HD camera to see where the reflections come from, thus telling you the angle of the optical surface at that location. The data is then integrated to form a full surface map. In theory, this system could be developed at low cost, with relatively high performance.



https://www.osapublishing.org/ao/abstract.cfm?uri=ao-13-11-2693



Hope this (or at least some of it) helps!



-J

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