Practical Alignment Using An Autostigmatic Microscope
ABSTRACT:
Auto-stigmatic microscopes (ASM) are useful for bringing centers of curvatures of lenses and mirrors to the centers of balls used as part of an alignment fixture. However, setting up the fixture to get the balls used for alignment in a straight line to represent the optical axis generally requires another piece of equipment. We show that within a practical range, the autocollimation mode of a modern ASM can be used to align balls to an axis with about the same precision as they could be aligned with an alignment telescope, or laser tracker. As a lead in to this topic, we discuss our meaning of alignment, the means of positioning optically important features such as centers of curvature and foci to the coordinates specified on assembly drawings. Finally, we show a method of using an ASM along with other tooling to align a toroidal mirror using its foci.