WHAT WE'VE DONE
Here are a few of the hundreds of jobs we’ve completed in the past 25 years:
| It’s a new millennium—and the light of the future is here. While widespread household use still waits for mass-produced “light bulbs,” industry and military applications are growing fast. Every day new LED light sources reach the market, offering higher power, smaller size, incredibly long life. SSG has contributed original, efficient optical designs for LED’s in forensic, medical and research equipment. Do you want to find contaminants in a crime scene? To illuminate odd-shaped spaces for night-time security? To monitor underwater oil pumping equipment? To photograph what’s going on inside a stomach? To check out pipeline walls? These little giants find new uses every day, but they are different from conventional light sources, they need a new approach to collecting and delivering light—and we’ve got it. |
Ultraviolet LED, less than one
millimeter across.
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Shotgun shell with partial print, dusted
with
fluorescent powder and viewed with ultraviolet
LED light.
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| needs light – lots of it. Illuminating a movie or TV set calls for some big lamps, big fixtures, and big power supplies. To get light from a high-power arc lamp to a rectangular set – a set the shape of a TV or movie screen – we need to design a light fixture that directs as much light as possible into that rectangle.
In the picture to the right, we see a split trough design for a long Xenon arc lamp. Light from the reflector could bounce forward through the linear arc lamp, where it can be reabsorbed. To avoid this dangerous and damaging geometry, SSG designed a split reflector that takes light above and below the lamp.
SSG has designed many TV and movie fixtures, not only for the usual box format, but also for huge Fresnel spot lights and for special effects like lightning and explosions.
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Split trough design
for a long Xenon arc lamp.
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SPAR reflector next to
3.5 inch sphere.
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follows ultraconservative design rules. Electronics and electrical components must be well-known, much-tested, no surprises. This project for the Space Station called for tungsten-filament lamps that had been proven reliable in flight. Not optimum for the lighting tasks, but totally safe in the space environment. The job - to partner with TV cameras at several stations on a movable arm [see what it looks like] controlled from within the Space Station.
Cameras on this remote manipulator monitor experiments, inspect the Station itself, and check docking maneuvers. A multi-segment nickel electroform did the job. SSG's detailed coordinate list of radius versus axial length defined the contour. The manufacturer used this to create a polished mandrel for electroforming the hollow reflectors (see left). Said Program Manager John Richter, “The spec was impossible, but she did it again.” |
Throughout the world, work continues on the “big-physics” attempt to develop by inertial confinement – squeezing a small amount of material together until its density triggers nuclear fusion. The trigger energy comes from many light beams all converging on a tiny target sphere. Light must “push” on the target sphere evenly from many sides.
This is really an illumination problem. Each beam passes through a large focusing lens designed by SSG. The lense is aspheric, carefully ground and polished to exacting specifications for material purity and shape. The lens and its anti-reflecting coating must survive repeated pulses of high energy, heating and cooling. This lens is part of a nuclear research laser fusion system in the U.K. |
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A large focusing lens designed by SSG,
part of a nuclear research laser
fusion system in the U.K.
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A windshield heater used by
glass repair shops.
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Many of the jobs we work on are that use light to perform some useful, everyday task.
Here is a windshield heater employed by auto glass repair shops. Glass is often secured to the window frame by an adhesive that softens with heat. Light from two small tungsten-halogen lamps passes through the glass to warm the adhesive. The repairman guides this hand-held heater around the window frame. When it's soft enough, he pushes the window from the inside, and it releases safely.
The reflector, designed by SSG, is an aluminum casting, plated and coated. |
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