Optical Surfaces Establish World Leading Position in Production of Custom Paraboloids

Benefiting from a unique stabilised production environment and over 40 years experience - Optical Surfaces Ltd. has established itself as a world leading supplier of custom off-axis parabolic mirrors (paraboloids).

Optical Surfaces Ltd's highly experienced and skilled team of engineers and craftsmen can typically produce off-axis parabolic mirrors up to 600 mm in diameter with surface accuracy's to lambda/20 p-v depending upon off-axis angles. With 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 on aspherics of ~ 1 nm rms. 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.

Off-axis parabolic mirrors from Optical Surfaces Ltd. have been chosen by many leading establishments around the world for undertaking applications including high power laser focusing, focusing upon astronomical objects, collimating reference wavefronts, beam expansion, MTF measurement, MRTD testing and bore sight alignment for missile guidance systems.

Parabolic mirrors are the most common type of aspheric used in optical instruments. They are free from spherical aberrations, and thus focus a parallel beam to a point or a point source to infinity. Off-axis parabolic mirrors provide an unobstructed aperture allowing complete access to the focal region as well as reducing the size and minimising the weight of a design. They are especially suitable for broadband or multiple wavelength applications due to their completely achromatic performance. All together these advantages produce a cost-effective solution for many optical design problems with no compromise in performance.

Production approved to ISO 9001-2000 the quality of off-axis parabolic mirrors from Optical Surfaces Ltd. is ensured using a range of interferometric and surface test measurements on all optics and optical systems leaving the factory.