Facilities

We have a wide range of highly specified facilities and equipment available for use. These include:

  • Laboratories and Test Equipment (including flexure rigs)
    • 13 lab areas (maximum lab height is 6.5 m) including large lab with overhead crane
    • Can handle equipment up to mass of 10 tonnes
    • Lab facilities (compressed air, water cooling, chilled water etc.)
    • US power supply (110 V 60 Hz)
    • 3 flexure rigs; maximum test capacity is 10 tonnes and 3 cubic metres.
  • Test Cryostats
    • Test cryostats (various sizes; temperatures down to 4 K)
    • Includes a large (1 m diameter) cryostat operating to 20 K.
    • Cryogenic support equipment (liquid nitrogen and helium, leak detectors etc.)
  • Clean Rooms
    • 4 m x 2 m class 1000 clean room with class 100 laminar flow cabinet, used for electronic
    • Device assembly.
    • 6 m x 4 m class 1000 clean room (currently dedicated to one project)
    • 4 m x 4 m tented class 10 000 clean room
  • Mechanical Workshop
    • CNC and manual mills and lathes
    • CMM in semi-clean area (used to check part dimensions after manufacture, and also for system alignment). Covers area of 700
    • mm x 700 mm x 500 mm; resolution approximately 1.5 μm
  • Electronics
    • Lexica microscope with TV camera and frame grabber, located in class 1000 clean room
    • Two complete data acquisition systems for CCD/Infra-red array measurements (32 channels, 1 MHz sampling per channel
    • SDSU III/ARC controllers)
    • Full scanning monochromater (used for absolute quantum efficiency measurements at optical/IR wavelengths (0.04 to 1.5 μm)
    • NPL calibrated diodes for calibrating optical CCD detectors
    • Test cryostats for IR detector characterization (cool to 45 K using closed cycle coolers)
    • JHK band filters (1 to 2.5 μm)
    • Fe55 X-ray source (used to measure charge transfer efficiency of CCDs)
    • Calibrated 4 inch square black body source
    • Full FPGA design environment (Altera devices)
    • Software: Protel for schematic capture, PSPICE
  • Optics
    • 6 large optical benches
    • Three portable fully phase shifting optical interferometers (used to measure flatness etc.) - up to 100 mm beam diameter
    • Perkin Elmer spectrophotometer (0.4 - 3 μm) (used for measuring filter transmission etc.)
    • 2 alignment telescopes
    • TM5100A theodolite
    • Cooled CCD camera
Facilities