Precision Glass & Optics (PG&O), a U.S.-based optics company, has teamed with SCHOTT (U.S.) to provide a new Optical Mirrors white paper and instructional video on the unique glass substrate, BOROFLOAT® 33. PG&O selected BOROFLOAT glass for the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX) mirrors project at Texas A&M and University of Texas, Austin. The telescope was designed to measure dark energy in outer space.
PG&O Fabricates Specialized Optical Mirrors from BOROFLOAT Glass
According to Dan Bukaty, Jr., president of PG&O, “BOROFLOATwas a great choice because of its low thermal expansion characteristics, excellent optical properties, and its relatively low cost, when compared to other optical materials. Specifications for optical mirrors are extremely demanding becauseeven slight deviations can have a significant impact onthe outcome of specific performance. The specialty optical mirrors used in the 150 spectrographs of the Visible Integral Field Replicable Unit Spectrographs (VIRUS)unit were carefully fabricated and coated in our Southern California facility. It was an exciting application for PG&O, and happily,a very successful project.”
For over 30 years PG&O has offered affordable, high-volume precision optics, assemblies and custom optical solutions for a wide variety of industries. With a 72” state-of-the-art coating chamber and a large, in-house glass substrates inventory, PG&O also provides quick turnaround on a wide array of flats, prisms, and beamsplitters. Applications include astronomy, medical, display, imaging, projection, defense, aerospace, scanning, and industrial instrumentation.
To view the new PG&O / SCHOTT BOROFLOAT video, please go to www.pgo.com. To download the white paper .pdf, please go to: PG&O_SCHOTT BOROFLOAT White Paper.
PRECISION GLASS & OPTICS – www.pgo.com - Celebrating the company’s 30th year, PG&O delivers high quality, precision glass, optics, and optical coatings for a variety of applications. The company has an extremely large inventory of glass products and a full optical fabrication shop to provide advanced optical coatings and manufacturing large mirror blanks. Other services include CNC machining, polishing, slicing, sawing, scribing, grinding, edging, assembly, and more. With three large coating chambers, and an expert, in-house engineering staff, our cost-effective and reliable optics and advanced thin film coatings are ideal for military, aerospace, astronomy, biomedical, imaging, laser, digital cinema, solar markets, and more.