[SatNews] Unlike standard parabolic mirrors, Off-Axis Paraboloids (OAP) direct and focus incident collimated light at a specific angle, allowing unrestricted access to the focal point as well as reducing the size and minimizing the weight of an optical design—over the last 50+ years, Optical Surfaces Ltd. has established itself as a leading international manufacturer of top quality, high precision optical components and systems for organisations involved with space, astronomy, fundamental physics, defense and the environment.
Working with the highest quality optical glasses, Optical Surfaces Ltd. produce standard OAP from 60 to 60mm in diameter. Benefiting from a uniquely stable manufacturing environment, and a highly skilled team of engineers and craftsmen, Optical Surfaces is able to routinely produce OAPs with surface accuracy to lambda/20 (peak-to-valley) depending upon off-axis angles. Using proprietary polishing techniques Optical Surfaces can, depending on the surface accuracy required, achieve the natural limit to the off-axis angle of around 25-30 degrees and surface micro-roughness of less than 1nm. A range of coatings is available for standard and custom components from metallic with or without protective overcoat to multilayer dielectrics and ultra hard coatings.
Standard and custom design Off-axis Parabolic Mirrors from Optical Surfaces Ltd. have been selected by many leading establishments around the world for undertaking applications including Schleiren, FLIR and MTF testing ; High power laser focusing ; Focusing upon astronomical objects ; Collimating reference wavefronts ; Beam expansion and Bore sight alignment for missile guidance systems.
Drawing upon over 50 years experience in producing high precision OAP mirrors, the company has produced a handbook to enable users to get top performance from their optics. To download the handbook and product data sheet, please visit http://www.optisurf.com/index.php/products/off-axis-paraboloids/. Optical Surfaces is a UK-based company supplying the world with optical components and instruments including flats, spheres, aspherics, paraboloids, toroids and windows.
The company infosite is located at: http://www.optisurf.com/