Engineering Science and Materials Commons^™

A Machining System For Turning Nonaxisymmetric Surfaces, Spivey Stevens Douglass

Doctoral Dissertations

Aspheric reflecting surfaces possessing extremely high surface finish and contour accuracy are often demanded by the optics industry. Such reflectors have also been required in high energy gas laser systems used to trigger thermonuclear reactions in experiments connected with advanced electric power generation.

Historically, production of optical pieces of the quality described required many repetitions of selective hand-lapping, polishing and measuring. In the past ten years production of these pieces has been enhanced by machining with diamond cutting tools on precision numerically controlled (NC) turning machines. These machines are capable of generating axisymmetric surfaces competitive in quality to those produced …