Liquid lenses, are a type of optical lens that have a tunable focal length by shaping a liquid electronically. These lenses can be based on voice coil actuation, or based on electrowetting technology, which involves manipulating the surface tension of a conductive...
This is our last entry on our scanning mirrors series. In this article, we will talk about the use of scanning mirrors when working with welding environments. As you can imagine, not only do the optical requirements differ when compared to those of a scanning...
This is our third installment of a four-series blogs about steering mirrors. We have talked previously about steering mirrors in laser markings and steering mirrors in OCT systems. This week, we will talk about the steering mirror requirements for those in LIDAR...
This week, we will continue our discussion of fast steering mirrors. If you missed our last article, go ahead and read about steering mirrors for laser marking. Here, we will discuss the design requirements for steering mirrors in Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT)....
Introduction In previous entries, we have talked about the design of scanning microscopes, infinity corrected microscopes, confocal microscope design, and Koehler illumination systems-a common illumination system in microscopes. The most essential microscope element...
The choice of glass is a fundamental part in the optical design process. This is especially true for IR and thermal optics materials. In this article, we will review Calcium Fluoride (CaF2), an interesting glass that has a wide range of applications. Before we start,...
Beam splitters are a fundamental element in optical systems. Beam splitters are, in essence, optical components used to divide a single light source (usually a laser) into two separate beams. The more common kind of beam splitters (the kind that you can find in most...
