Ruda-Cardinal Provides Custom Concept-to-Delivery Optical Engineering and Manufacturing Services

14 Aug 2020

Ruda-Cardinal, Inc. (RCI) takes your engineering concepts and delivers a final product customized to your specifications and you retain ownership of the design. Our engineers are experts in producing manufacturable designs for all environments from the desert to outer space.  

Phase 1: Proof of Concept

First, we work with you to finalize the specifications and perform a limited first-order trade-off study. The outcomes of this study will confirm that physics is on our side and the desired system can be built. Then, we review possible optical layouts with you to determine the best path for success.

Phase 2: Preliminary Design Review (PDR)

Next, Ruda-Cardinal produces the full optical design and a limited opto-mechanical design. The optimized optical design process accounts for many aspects including performance specifications, volume requirements, lens manufacturability, glass types, thermal requirements, allowable compensators, and assembly requirements.

Looping with the design process is tolerancing - including various sensitivity studies and Monte Carlo testing for manufacturing and assembly errors. A key component of Ruda-Cardinal design and tolerance process is consideration of the assembly, alignment, and testing processes very early in the design process.

This phase includes a preliminary opto-mechanical design to show the general scheme for holding the optics and the drawing package of the custom optical components.

This phase ends with a design review, where you determine if you would like us to order the custom optical components from our trusted suppliers.   

Phase 3: Critical Design Review (CDR)

This phase produces the final opto-mechanical design, final bill of materials, and finalized procedures for assembly, alignment, and testing.  During the mechanical design, our engineers consider the performance specifications, tolerance requirements, movement needs, surface finish, and volume and weight requirements; also stress and environmental conditions including vibration, shock, and thermal.

Depending on program requirements, we perform varying levels of finite element analysis which, including other engineering calculations, will inform the mechanical design.

During the final stages of the mechanical design, we may complete a full stray light analysis.

This phase ends with a design review, where you determine if you would like us to order the custom mechanical components. 

Phase 4: Build and Test

In the final phase, we build and test the final optical systems. After receiving the components, we follow our developed unique procedures to assemble and align the system. During the alignment process we typically use compensators to adjust for manufacturing errors to achieve the best possible optical performance. 

The final step is the optical performance testing and comparison to the optical model, as needed, possibly including additional environmental testing such as vibration, thermal, shock, etc. 

Ruda-Cardinal will then ship the final compliant system(s) to you.

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