Since our founding in 1926, Tinsley Laboratories has become the established leader in the design and manufacture of precision optical components, assemblies, and sub-systems.

WHY ASPHERES?
Spherical optics can produce aberrations and distortions, undesirable flaws that can be offset by still other spheres, at the expense of added weight and size. The asphere, a non-spherical optical surface, permits new dimensions in optical performance by eliminating aberrations and distortions without added weight and size. Until now, aspheres have had two principal disadvantages: cost and difficulty in replication.

Beryllium Processing
Tinsley has had years of experience in processing light-weighted Beryllium mirrors, and is currently involved in the manufacture of an Advanced Mirror System Demonstration (AMSD) model for the Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST) segments through a teaming effort with TRW / Ball Aerospace.

CCOS - Computer-Controlled Optical Surfacing
Tinsley’s CCOS technology permits the utilization of increasingly complex aspheric surfaces for the cost effective solution of optical problems.

National Ignition Facility
LASER FUSION
Since 1975 Tinsley has fabricated many of the critical optics for U.S. Laser Fusion programs. Past projects include fabrication of hundreds of lenses for the University of Rochester’s OMEGA laser, Sandia National Laboratories - Z Beamlet, SHIVA, BEAMLET and NOVA lasers for (LLNL) Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Currently Tinsley is fabricating a large number of optics for LLNL’s (NIF) National Ignition Facility. The NIF’s arena-sized facility will house 192, forty-centimeter square laser beams designed to deliver 1.8 million joules of ultraviolet laser energy and 500 terawatts of power to millimeter-sized target located at the center of its 10 meter-diameter target chamber. Each beamline contains 110 major optical components distributed over a 510-meter path.