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27 April 2007

New Piezo Motor Driven Optical Mounts from Newport

Newport Corporation has launched the Agilis™ Series piezo motor driven optical mounts. The mounts offer ultra-high adjustment sensitivity and convenient remote operation, making them an ideal solution for many laser-based scientific research applications.

According to Thomas Bartholomäus, Product Manager for Motion Control at Newport, "While it is possible, in theory, to achieve sub-arcsec adjustment sensitivity with manual components, there are a wide range of factors including mechanical friction, human operation, and environmental conditions that can make an experiment's set-up time lengthy and frustrating. In order to alleviate some of these problems, companies began to introduce motor-driven solutions. These earlier solutions, however, were prohibitively expensive. Today, Newport has unveiled a sleek, cost-effective piezo-driven solution that provides superior adjustment sensitivity, speed, and position stability for about the same price as a manual component."

Agilis optical mounts feature Newport's new, patent-pending, non-resonant piezo direct drive motors. These integrated motors are directly coupled to a moving platen. When idle, spring forces lock the mirror's position for true set-and-forget long term stability. These mounts have a faster adjustment speed than screw driven designs and are free of the problems associated with backlash or hysteresis. In contrast to ultrasonic motors, the Agilis non-resonant motor concept makes small adjustments more predictable with its 50nm incremental motion capability, ideal for ultra-sensitive optical alignments.

Agilis mounts are manually operated via a battery powered, 2-axis controller. For each axis, the controller provides two rows of push buttons for step size settings, precise low speed adjustments and fast coarse motion. A network-enabled computer controller is currently in the design stage.

Contact: Jon Richardson
E: jon.richardson@spectra-physics.com


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