Project log
Designed a phase-coherent directed energy device for propagating high power laser beams through turbulent air. Designed the diffraction-limited optics, the lens and fiber optical mounts, the housing, the cooling system, the alignment system, and found vendors.
Designed the optics & mechanical mounts for an IR wavefront sensor.
Designed a Switchable Vision Block (Biocular HUD) for armored vehicles, which allows real or virtual graphics to be overlaid on the tank commander’s outside view. This is similar to the heads-up displays in F-16 aircraft. Performed all of the optical, mechanical, and polarization design work, built the prototype, and provided the customer with complete documentation and test procedures for production manufacture.
Designed the optical system for an orbiting, three wavelength band optical system to track and identify other satellites. Bands were VNIR, LWIR, and microwave. Designed a multi-wave optical system for drone turrets.
Designed the optics for a 0.6 meter orbiting pushbroom satellite to map the entire Earth to a resolution of 1.2 meters. The optics are diffraction-limited across a 2.3 degree flat field of view. Performed the thermal analysis of the optical and mechanical systems to ensure that they meet the resolution requirements throughout the earth-orbit thermal cycling.
Designed an extremely small 3FOV Star-Tracker using Invar housings and Zerodur optics. Device was designed for portable military backup systems if the GPS fails.
Designed parts of the mechanical package for a very high resolution laser Doppler ranging system for a weather satellite and for an airborne LIDAR system. The work included lens, flexure, and etalon plate mounts, vacuum and cooling systems, and fiber optic and CCD detector mounts.
Designed the motion stage of a vision system to track the growth of human tissue in a locker-based experiment on the Space Shuttle.
Designed and built the Zerodur optics, Invar mounts and the support structure for a 14″ F/21.4 extreme ultraviolet telescope. The design maintained its optical alignment through the thermal cycling and 20 gravity bump and spin up of the launch rocket during its flight from the desert, to above the atmosphere, to its return to Earth. Designed and built a high-vacuum UV collimator to align the telescope optics inside a vacuum chamber.
Designed the dispersing and focusing optics for a hyperspectral scanner. Made prints and RFQs, located suppliers, worked with vendors to ensure best price and quality.
Designed the Illumination and Analysis optics for a blood analyzer.
Provided custom production optics for their flow cytometers.
Performed the system analysis and analyzed the pre-production procedures of a hyperspectral medical imager designed to identify melanomas.
Designed the diffraction-limited optics and dual illumination system (white light & fluorescence) for a medical retinal imager to detect the early onset of diabetes.
Responsible for the development and production of the visible-optics section of a medical laparoscope to detect cancer cells and resolve cell nuclei in living human tissue. Designed the optical zoom system and the electro-mechanical servo system to drive it. Performed a tolerance analysis of all the optics to ensure the device could be built in production quantities. Designed the lens cells and the lens measuring equipment which enabled the complex relay system to be built to diffraction-limited performance levels. Designed the white light illumination system. Matched the optics to the CCD camera resolution.
Designed and built a 16-channel interface device to carry the electrical signals from an active rodent’s brain to a computer.
Designed the transmit and receive optics for a two-wavelength, laser-based water/ice detection system for road vehicles to give the car forward information about road conditions.
Designed a camera to simultaneously record SWIR, MWIR, and LWIR images while flying over ground, either from aircraft or low earth orbit. Optics are diffraction-limited with a 6x8 degree FOV and compensate for forward motion of the camera.
Invented, developed, and saw into production a patented FC optical fiber connector, which locates single-mode fibers to sub-micron accuracy while accommodating oversize ferrules, for a commercial Raman holographic spectrograph manufacturer. Designed and built the production fixtures which were necessary to produce the connectors in quantity. Performed the opto-mechanical design and stress analysis to ensure that they could be built on a production basis and would survive in the field.
Designed a thermally compensated spectrograph which incorporates a volume-phase holographic grating, using the thermal compensation features of Zemax. Designed and built a production device to improve the optical alignment and resolution of the spectrograph lenses. Designed lens housings to be non-distorting through thermal cycling.
Designed the mechanical package for the commercial production of a fiber-optic femtosecond laser.
Analyzed the MTF effects of changing the detector type and cold shield position of a three-field-of-view MWIR telescope.
Designed the machine tool base and servo system for a very high-performance electrical discharge machine. Servo mech response was measured to be 115 Hz.