The SLAC Design and Manufacturing Process of Sphere-Mounted Reflectors (Oct 1997)

Technical Report · Wed May 14 04:00:00 EDT 2003

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/813115· OSTI ID:813115

Ruland, Robert E ^[1]

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1. SLAC

Sphere-Mounted Reflectors (SMRs) are used at SLAC for a variety of alignment purposes. They consist of a retroreflective set of mirrors mounted inside a hollowed out sphere. The most significant property of these is that the reflected beam emerging from the SMR is parallel to the incoming beam. The reflector is comprised of three reflective surfaces that are mutually orthogonal forming the geometrical equivalent of the corner of a cube. Initially a series of 1 1/2 inch (38.10 mm) versions were purchased for $3250 each. These consisted of steel balls that were hollowed out allowing an air-cube to be precisely inserted into the ball so that the apex of the mirror planes would intersect the center of the ball. This is critical so that when the SMR is placed into a ''nest'' it will always reflect from the same three-dimensional position regardless what orientation it is in. Due to the high cost of manufacturing, a delivery time of several months, and with no assurance that the reflector will pass quality control, we decided to embark on manufacturing these ''in-house'' hoping for less expensive and equally or possibly even more accurate versions.

• Research Organization: Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Menlo Park, CA (US)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (US)
• DOE Contract Number: AC03-76SF00515
• OSTI ID: 813115
• Report Number(s): SLAC-PUB-9823
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE
43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS
ALIGNMENT
DESIGN
MANUFACTURING
MIRRORS
ORIENTATION
QUALITY CONTROL
STANFORD LINEAR ACCELERATOR CENTER
STEELS