White Paper: Not All Optical Mounts Are Created Equal

By Daryl P. Ashby and David A. Ocepek, Newport Corporation

With the wide variety of optical mounts available today, it's more important than ever for researchers and engineers to understand how subtle differences in mount design impact performance and cost. There are increasingly more optical mounts provided to fit specific requirements of different applications as manufacturing and material technology advances. Users have many options and configurations from which to choose when determining the correct mount for the job. When selecting an optical mount, the important parameters to consider are adjustment range, resolution, repeatability, orthogonality of motion, stability, compactness, and thermal drift.