Optikos Introduces The ColliMeter™ To Precisely Measure Set Up And Qualification Of Collimators

For most of our 40+ years, Optikos has manufactured, aligned, and installed refractive and reflective collimators with our definitive lens and camera measurements systems. Our quest to generate the best possible wavefronts on equipment ranging--from our standard OpTest® systems to missile seeker test stations, and from our compact Meridian® target projectors to the tracking telescopes at Cape Canaveral--has led to the development of sophisticated alignment apparatus and techniques. 

In response to numerous customer requests we are now pleased to offer this instrumentation for sale under our ColliMeter™ family brand. From the visible to the LWIR, and from small to large aperture systems, customers are now able to set the collimation of a source object, or to determine the apparent distance of a projected object.

The ColliMeter™ family employs a scanning pentaprism technique referenced in ISO 11421 to measure the wavefront slope across an aperture. Sub-aperture centroids are recorded as a function of pupil location, essentially producing a classical ray fan plot. A perfect collimator produces a straight line with slope related to the departure of the apparent object distance from infinity. For a real-world refractive collimator with a polychromatic light source, the plot conforms to higher order aberrations and statistical analysis is used to determine defocus.

Besides measuring collimation and defocus, the ColliMeter™ 350 can be fitted with an optional autocollimator module for coalignment of the source object to reference features on the collimating optic.

Two ColliMeter™ instruments are offered: The ColliMeter™ 350 for larger collimators in which the beam is horizontal and the instrument is brought to the collimating system, and the benchtop ColliMeter™ 50 in which smaller projectors are mounted vertically on the instrument. Visit us at Photonics West booth 1057 to see our new ColliMeter and learn more.