Optical Surfaces Ltd. is a leading international producer of large diameter prototype and custom Off-Axis Paraboloids (OAPs) that benefit from an ultra-stable manufacturing environment.
Employing proprietary production techniques, Optical Surfaces highly skilled engineers are world renowned for producing OAP mirrors with unmatched surface accuracy, quality, and slope errors.
Off-Axis Paraboloids, also known as off-axis parabolic mirrors, are commonly used as a collimator in many optical systems, where the parabola is used to produce a collimated beam from a point source. Usefully OAP’s provide unhindered aperture and access to the focal plane. They are ideal for broadband or multiple wavelength applications, thanks to their complete achromatic performance. Off-axis paraboloids often deliver the most cost-effective solution without compromising performance to many problems faced by optical and system designers.
Custom OAPs from Optical Surfaces Ltd. are used by leading research establishments and companies for applications that include focusing on astronomical objects, high power laser focusing, collimating reference wavefronts, beam expansion, MTF measurement, MRTD testing and bore sight alignment for missile guidance systems.
Optical Surfaces Ltd has written an informative guide to enable users to get top performance from their OAP mirror. This illustrated guide includes an introduction to OAP geometry as well as step-by step instruction on initial alignment; tips to correct for errors in focus and tilt, set off-axis distance and rotation as well as a final alignment procedure to ensure optimized performance.