The Trioptics laser rod test station is now available in the UK from Northampton-based Armstrong Optical.
The quality of laser rods is strongly influenced by material homogeneity and the parallelism of the rod end-surface. The new Trioptics laser rod test station was developed specifically for the production QA testing of rods up to 150 mm in length, measuring the relative positions of the rod ends using two autocollimators with a resolution of 0.05 arcsec. With a switch of sensor heads, the transmitted wavefront distortion can be measured using a Trioptics Shack-Hartmann Waversensor with a wavefront accuracy of <λ/20 (RMS).
The Trioptics laser rod test station is designed to operate in production and measured parameters include parallelism of the laser rod end-surfaces, beam deviation through the laser rod; optical and mechanical axis determination, transmitted wavefront, and material imperfections.
OptiCentric software controls the centration measurement and provides both specific data sets and measurement certificates.