Manufacturing of high-precision aspherical and freeform optics

摘要

Aspherical and freeform optical elements have a large potential in reducing optical aberrations and to reduce the numberof elements in complex high performance optical systems. However, manufacturing a single piece or a small series ofaspherical and freeform optics has for long been limited by the lack of flexible metrology tools. With the cooperativedevelopment of the NANOMEFOS metrology tool by TNO, TU/e and VSL, we are able to measure the form of aspheresand freeforms up to 500 mm in diameter with an accuracy better than 10 nm rms. This development opened thepossibility to exploit a number of iterative, corrective manufacturing chains in which manufacturing technologies such asSingle Point Diamond Turning, freeform grinding, deterministic polishing and classical polishing are combined in aniterative loop with metrology tools to measure form deviation (like CMM, LVDT contact measurement, interferometryand NANOMEFOS).This paper discusses the potentials, limitations and differences of iterative manufacturing chains used by TNO in themanufacturing of high performance optics for astronomical purposes such as the anufacturing of the L2 of the OpticalTube Assembly of the four laser-guide star facility of the ESO VLT, Manufacturing of Aluminium freeforms mirrors forthe SCUBA-2 instrument. Based on these results we will give an outlook into the new challenges and solutions inmanufacturing high-precision optics.© (2012) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.