Engineering perspectives related to specification, design, manufacture and evaluation of collimator lenses are discussed using the example of a recently manufactured collimator for use in thermal imager evaluations. Collimator optics are important test facility components used for the evaluation of thermal imager systems. The thermal imager test facility at NVESD needed new collimator lenses in order to use targets small enough to work within the limitations of blackbody uniformity while testing thermal imager systems for the Driver's Viewer Enhancer program. These systems require very low spatial frequency targets to completely characterize minimum resolvable temperature difference. Three perspectives on the design, manufacture and testing of a collimator lens assembly are presented in this paper: (1) the perspective of the user, who is the optics specifier; (2) that of the optics designer/manufacturer; and (3) that of the optical testing engineers who validated the optics design using CODE V and tested the optics at NVESD's optical test facility. Different perspective result in the customary use of different parameters to define specifications. Therefore, optics specifiers must consider various perspectives to ensure the lens design meets desired requirements.

Date Published: 10 June 1996
PDF: 12 pages
Proc. SPIE 2743, Infrared Imaging Systems: Design, Analysis, Modeling, and Testing VII, (10 June 1996); doi: 10.1117/12.241969

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 2743:
Infrared Imaging Systems: Design, Analysis, Modeling, and Testing VII
Gerald C. Holst, Editor(s)