Not All Optical Mounts Are Created Equal

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

Introduction
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.

There are three standard optical mount types that are widely available: 1) kinematic mounts, which combine adjustment range and stability, for an economical cost; 2) flexure mounts, which have more limited range but are compact and have predictable mechanical stability; and 3) gimbal mounts which essentially eliminate beam translation during adjustment. Many researchers, however, are developing a new breed of ultra-stable mounts that are based on principles such as elastic averaging.

Fundamental users have specific needs that cannot yet be addressed with "one-does-all" type mounts. Different types of mounts are made to satisfy fundamental user needs in specific applications; they include reducing alignment time, increasing stability, and minimizing space requirements.