Understanding the correct way to inspect optical surfaces is one the most important skills anyone working with or around optics can have, including technicians, material handlers, engineers, managers, and buyers. While understanding the specifications is the first step, learning how to actually perform the inspection is just as important. This hands-on workshop will allow attendees to learn the "Best Practice" for cleaning and inspecting optical surfaces. The course has many demonstrations and labs and gives attendees practice handling and inspecting optics to develop a high level of proficiency. This course was designed to bring photonics personnel up to an immediate working knowledge on the correct methods to conduct a surface inspection in accordance with MIL, ANSI, and ISO standards. It is designed to complement SC700 Understanding Scratch and Dig Specifications and provide hands-on experience applying the specification and inspection parameters covered in that course.

Surface imperfection specifications (i.e. Scratch-Dig) are among the most misunderstood, misinterpreted, and ambiguous of all optics component specifications. This course provides attendees with an understanding of the source of ambiguity in surface imperfection specifications, and provides the context needed to properly specify surface imperfections using a variety of specification standards, and to evaluate a given optic to a particular level of surface imperfection specification. The course will focus on the differences and application of the Mil-PRF-13830, ISO 10110-7, and ANSI OP1.002. Many practical and useful specification examples are included throughout, as well as a hands-on demonstration on visual comparison evaluation techniques. The course is followed by SC1017 Optics Surface Inspection Workshop, which provides hands-on experience conducting inspections using the specification information provided in this course.

Specifying optics, even commercial optics, can be a daunting task. The optics industry has evolved its own language, symbology, and standards for specifying and manufacturing optical components which can be obscure to even a veteran engineer, much less a newcomer to the industry. This course provides an overview of the basic principles, terms, and standards that are necessary for someone specifying optical elements. A primary goal of the course is to serve as a practical guide to optics specifications and drawings, and how they relate to optical system performance. Engineers and users of optics who need to buy optical components, but are unsure of all the detailed specifications, will benefit from taking this course.

The surface texture of a polished optical surface is an important, if misunderstood, surface property. This course is designed to bring photonics personnel up to an immediate working knowledge on surface texture specifications and the impact surface roughness and waviness can have on an optical system. Surface roughness causes scatter and system transmission loss, while waviness and mid-spatial frequency ripple can cause loss of resolution, image quality, veiling glare, beam modulation and a host of other issues. Until recently, surface texture could be safely described by a single number, RMS roughness, following MIL-STD-10A, since most polished optical surfaces were manufactured using the same slurry-pitch process that had existed for decades. In the past 30 years, however, new manufacturing technologies have evolved using molding, diamond turning, synthetic lap polishing and deterministic figuring which have dramatically altered the surface finish of optics. In order to control the resultant surface texture errors, new specifications like gradients, correlation values, PSDs and MSF ripple specifications have been introduced. Most users do not completely understand these new notations however, and the meaning of even a simple RMS roughness specification has become obscure, or even meaningless. The course begins with the origins and evolution of surface texture specifications in optics, and defines the terms and parameters used to control surface texture in the modern optical manufacturing world. The potential performance impact of surface texture errors will be covered, and some specific case studies will be used to show the impact of various amplitudes of these errors on precision optical instrument performance. The national and international standards are introduced, and the derivation of meaningful specification for texture and waviness for common applications is discussed. Finally, the identification, measurement and reduction of these manufacturing errors is treated.

Since the late 1990's, the optics community has gradually been converting optics drawings from a free-form, notes-based method to a standardized, international pictographic method. In 2013, the United States will join the international community by adopting a version of ISO 10110 as the American National Standard for optics drawings. This new method is a great boon for an industry in need of standardization, but can be very confusing to the uninitiated. This course provides attendees with an introduction to ISO-10110, the international standard for optics drawing notations. The course concentrates on the fundamentals of the drawing layout and how to read the notations required for typical optics, such as glass parameters, radius, wave-front, surface imperfections and roughness. Attendees are also informed about how the American version is going to differ from the current international standard. Practical and useful examples are included throughout.