PG&O® Provides Highly Precise, Large Polished Optics

Precision Glass & Optics (PG&O) is expanding its large-format optical manufacturing capabilities, offering precision optics on polished substrates up to 30 inches in diameter. The company combines advanced polishing technology, precision metrology, and extensive optical-material expertise to produce large components to demanding customer specifications.

PG&O’s large-format capabilities include polishing substrates up to 30 inches, flatness and transmitted wavefront accuracy of Lambda/30 over any 6-inch diameter, parallelism to 1 arc second, angles to 1 second, and surface roughness as low as 2 angstroms. For prisms and other large optical components, the company can achieve 20/10 scratch-dig specifications, recognized as a high-precision quality standard.

A key part of this capability is PG&O’s fleet of eleven continuous planetary polishers (CPs), including a state-of-the-art 96-inch CP. This equipment enables the company to manufacture finished plano optical components with exceptional flatness, consistency, and uniformity.

According to Dan Bukaty Jr., president of Precision Glass & Optics, maintaining precise flatness and angular accuracy across all surfaces is particularly challenging when manufacturing large optics, especially large prisms. PG&O addresses these challenges by combining customer specifications with its broad inventory of optical materials and providing a one-stop manufacturing solution.

The company offers finished precision optics, thin-film coatings, and turnkey optical solutions for applications spanning wavelengths from 200 nm to 2500 nm. Its expanded large-optics capability provides customers with a reliable, cost-effective source for highly precise components requiring demanding dimensional and optical performance.