Date: Nov 15, 2013 Source: MDA (
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High-performance lenses and mirrors can have unique contours that make them difficult to polish precisely during the manufacturing process. But one MDA-funded company continues to produce and enhance polishing tools to make the task easier.
The company, QED Technologies, Inc. (Rochester, NY), for more than a decade has been developing and commercializing high-end tools to polish optics for use in industrial, government, and research applications. The QED products involve a magnetorheological fluid—a liquid that quickly alters its physical state to solid and back to a liquid depending on exposure to an electromagnetic field. Since the QED approach involves polishing on a tangent rather than by a normal direct force, the company's tools are less likely to create defects in the surface of an optic.
QED's recent offerings include a polishing system called Q-Flex™, which enables fast, automatic, tool-free alignment and changeovers of polishing heads and modular fluid controls, as well as new dedicated software and all-hours Internet support.
MDA awarded QED Technologies a SBIR Phase I contract in 2003 to develop a versatile, faster, and more efficient means to polish high-performance optical lenses.
QED Technologies, a wholly owned subsidiary of Cabot Microelectronics Corp. (Aurora, IL), offers finishing and metrology solutions for makers of advanced optics.
