World wide experience over the last few years has shown that for the efficient economic micro-machining of optical glasses to aspheric profiles, with zero to low sub-surface damage, a high loop stiffness between tool and workpiece is essential, and that the tool penetration must be controllable to better than 100 nm for many materials. This paper analyses the implications of this requirement for the stiffness and accuracy of workhead spindles. The design of a variety of ultra precision air bearing workhead spindles is outlined, and the efficient high speed metrological techniques for test and calibration of such spindles down to 1 nm resolution, is described.

Date Published: 11 April 1989
PDF: 12 pages
Proc. SPIE 1015, Micromachining Optical Components and Precision Engineering, (11 April 1989); doi: 10.1117/12.949444

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 1015:
Micromachining Optical Components and Precision Engineering
Peter Langenbeck, Editor(s)