Shows and Events

Recent Shows

   CIOE - China International Optoelectronic Expo, September 6-9, 2011, Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center, China

QED Technologies will exhibit at this important international tradeshow.  Visit QED in booth #9674. Click herefor more information.  

 Laser World of Photonics

 Laser World of Photonics, May 23-26, 2011, Munich, Germany. QED will be exhibiting for the first time at Laser World of Photonics. Visit the QED booth in Hall B2, #140. For more information, click here.

Optifab 2011, May 10-12, 2011, Riverside Convention Center, Rochester, New York. QED booth #215.

New Product Demonstration - Q-flex™
QED Technologies introduces Q-flex™, the next generation polishing system that harnesses the legendary power of MRF® and brings more flexibility, simplicity and confidence to precision optics finishing than ever before.

Q-flex helps you manufacture smarter. You can reconfigure Q-flex in minutes, allowing you to meet the specific demands of every job, even full freeform and off-axis aspheres. Interchangeable Fluid Control Modules make fluid changeovers fast, without waste. The all-new polishing heads can be switched out quickly and easily using Q-flex's automated alignment feature. All of this capability is controlled by QED's new software with a user interface that is intuitive and easy to use for every operator in your shop. Discover the Q-flex advantage.

Short Course
Paul Dumas, Dr. Paul Murphy and Dr. Greg Forbes from QED Technologies will provide an overview of how aspheric surfaces are designed, manufactured, and measured. The primary goal of this course is to teach how to determine whether a particular aspheric surface design will be difficult to make and/or test. This will facilitate cost/performance trade off discussions between designers, fabricators, and metrologists. For more information, click here.

Technical Papers

TD07-12: Precision polishing tungsten carbide molds using Magnetorheological Finishing (MRF®)
Tobias Nitzsche of QED Technologies, will present the latest results of MRF on variants of WC, most notably Fujilloy's TJS02, which show sub-nanometer Ra roughness values. For more information, click here.

TD07-19: Large aperture optical manufacturing for megajoule-class laser systems using Magnetorheological Finishing (MRF®)
Joseph A. Menapace, Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (United States)  For more information, click here.

TD07-38: Improving asphere manufacturability using Forbes polynomials
Dave Stephenson, JENOPTIK Optical Systems, Inc. (United States)  For more information, click here.

Panel Discussions

The Future of Optical Manufacturing in North America

Panel Moderator:
Thomas Battley, New York Photonics Industry Association (United States)

Panelists Include:

• Robert Edmund, (President, Edmund Optics)
• Michael Toro (Senior Director, Business Development and Strategy, Schott North America)
• Stephen Fantone (President, Optikos Corporation)
• Chris Koliopoulos (President and CEO, Zygo Corporation)
• Andrew Kulawiec (President, QED)

For more information, click here.

The Forbes Polynomial Surface: The Road Forward; A Return to Manufacturable
Panel Moderator: Kevin P. Thompson, Synopsys, Inc. (United States)

For more information, click here.

Photonics West 2011

Photonics West 2011, January 22-27, 2011, at the Moscone Center, San Francisco, CA. 22 - 27 January 2011, Booth # 722

OSA’s 94th Annual Meeting

OSA’s 94th Annual Meeting, October 24-28, 2010, Riverside Convention Center, Rochester New York

Course Description: This course provided an overview of the latest manufacturing techniques for precision optics, focusing mainly on the polishing, finishing and metrology aspects of fabrication.

Precision optics manufacturing has evolved dramatically over the past few decades. For example, conventional pitch polishing has been used for decades with little change and is still the industry cornerstone for high-precision polishing and finishing. CNC Polishing, Single Point Diamond Turning (SPDT), Magnetorheological Finishing (MRF) and Ion Beam Finishing (IBF) are examples of relatively new technologies that are increasing throughput, increasing precision, increasing determinism and/or enabling the finishing of more complicated geometries. The course will focus more on “complex” and “traditionally difficult” geometries, as opposed to “standard spheres.” We will discuss the strengths and limitations of the various technologies, and highlight how some optical designs that were previously considered cost-prohibitive or just plain impossible are becoming in reach of today’s optic shops. Aspheres represent a perfect example of one class of precision optics that has been hard to polish, hard to measure and therefore very expensive to manufacture. Their benefits to optical design (increased performance, reduced system weight, reduced system size) have been known for years, but their use has only been exploited when their added cost could be justified. A transformation has occurred in infrared (IR) systems, where SPDT and profilometry can provide the necessary precision and flexibility to fabricate aspheres as cost effectively as spheres. As new technologies (such as those discussed in this course) become more pervasive, it is only a matter of time for similar transformations to occur in the higher precision visible and UV markets. Click here for more information. 

Dr. Greg Forbes of QED Technologies will deliver an oral presentation on “Simple Manufacturability Estimates for Optical Aspheres”.

Abstract: The difficulty of fabricating an asphere is typically related to the difference between the local principal curvatures over its surface. Manufacturability estimates are derived by tailoring methods for estimating the rms of this difference. Click here for more information.

APOMA Optical Fabrication Workshop

APOMA Optical Fabrication Workshop, November 10, 11 2010 in Tucson Arizona

SPIE Optics and Photonics

SPIE Optics and Photonics, Optical Design and Engineering, San Diego, CA, August 1-5, 2010 International Optical Design Conference (IODC) co-located with Optical Fabrication and Testing, Jackson Hole, WY, June 13-16, 2010