Modifying Stock Optics: Additional Options

Alright so the next thing I just want to talk about quickly is just a few additional time saving services that we offer here at Edmund Optics. These aren’t necessarily tips, but they can certainly help someone modify an optic much more quickly than if they were to create an optic from scratch. First one is edge blackening. So, edge blackening is often used to reduce scatter in a system or stray light. Often times in a lens barrel, you want to make sure there’s not light bouncing off the inside of your lenses and creating stray data in whatever data you may collect or measure. Next is engraving which I touched upon a little bit earlier. Engraving, as the name implies, we’re actually engraving right into a glass or maybe an anodized aluminum surface to create a logo or a serialization number. And the third one here is a through-hole. So, a through-hole is pretty much just a variation on core drilling, if you will. So, for instance I have here a very large parabolic mirror, and you’ll see through the center we’ve actually cored out the center to create a through-hole. One of the common applications I always think of here is if you were making a reflective mirror. For that primary mirror, you usually want to have some kind of through-hole so that your light can bounce back through in the full system. I also have a few other examples of it here and here on smaller scales. But again, same idea. We’re putting a hole through an optic, maybe for a laser combination or something like that. OK, a few other services to mention are things such as mounted stock optics. So, we offer a whole suite of optical mounts in our catalog, as well as the optics that go in them. If for whatever reason you don’t want to combine those two we can certainly do that at Edmund and ship the finished part right to you that way. We can also kit optics together or create custom packaging. If it’s something that we’re making custom for you and you’d like to ship directly to your customer without packaging it yourself, well we could work with you to create that custom packaging. And finally, the metrology aspect of optics. We can certainly provide custom inspection reports with any optics we send. If a certain irregularity must be met, we could measure that and send that report off with the optic. Perhaps maybe just all the diameters need to be recorded and sent with the optics. That’s not a problem.