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Offices BOR started in an office and graduated to a 3000 square-foot facility at 201 N. Sanders Street in the heart of Ridgecrest, California. In 2002 a 2200 square foot-facility was added adjacent to the initial building and the optical polishing shop was moved to this new location. In 2003 two other adjacent buildings were added, a 1200 square-foot machine shop and a 1300 square-foot office complex. The total area of the BOR facility is now nearly 8000 square feet, most of which is laboratory and shop space. |
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Optics Lab The optics lab includes a vacuum evaporation system for coating mirrors up to 0.3 meters in diameter, an actuator and faceplate assembly and testing area, and an 8-meter long optical test tunnel. Optical testing is done using various techniques. A small and a large contact interferometer using Newton rings are used during mirror fabrication. For non-contact evaluation a Zygo interferometer is used. 1-meter diameter mirrors can be evaluated here. In addition to measuring the optical figure the radius of curvature can be determined accurately even for mirrors having radii of over 100 meters. more... |
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Polishing Shop Our polishing shop, which specializes in centrifugal elutriation, contains four small 0.1-meter spindles, six 0.4-meter spindles. Our polishing shop includes two large polishing systems. These spindles are capable of polishing 1.4-meter mirrors using centrifugal elutriation. We have also acquired a large Draper machine which will polish even larger sizes. To our knowledge, we have the largest centrifugal elutriation machines in the world. Our optical equipment also includes a small and a large diamond saw for slabbing glass as well as a Diamonett machine for coring out Coblentz spheres and various other pieces of optical equipment. |
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Machine Shop The machine shop is well equipped and includes two large Monarch lathes, several other smaller lathes (including one miniature lathe), two Bridgeport mills, a smaller Van Norman mill, two metal-cutting band saws, a shaper, two cutoff saws, four drill presses including a mill-drill, and precision grinders. There is also an extensive array of welding equipment. |
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© 2000 - 2010 Bennett Optical Research, All rights reserved.
201 N. Sanders, Ridgecrest, CA 93555 |