Harris Corporation

Ocean Optics, Inc.

R.j. Reynolds Tobacco Company

Microsemi Corporation

Dot Intellectual Properties, LLC

Noah Industries, Inc.

North America Technology Services, Inc.

Reeder N Ward

Kenneth D White

Mark Thomas Montgomery

Robert Morris Montgomery

Pat O Bentley

Warren H Miller

Thomas Harvey Otten

Greg K Daugherty

Glen E Geiger

James Dean Davis

Paul F Fischer

John W Oberding

An optical system design using Morse Taper mounted optical components for improving alignment performance, and more specifically a spectrometer design wherein the components include Morse Taper male tapers and the spectrometer bench include Morse Taper female openings that eases alignment and improves alignment stability, both physical and temperature related, of optical components while simplifying manufacture and maintaining a compact footprint is disclosed.

Component alignment system for optical systems

Miniature spectrometer case

The present disclosure relates to apparatuses configured to pre-form atomizers. The apparatus may include wick and heating element supplies configured to respectively provide a substantially continuous wick and a substantially continuous heating element. A winding mechanism is configured to wind the heating element about the wick. An adjustment mechanism is configured to adjust a position at which the winding mechanism winds the heating element about the wick. Additionally a synchronization mechanism synchronizes winding the heating element about the wick with adjustment of the position at which the heating element is wound about the wick such that the heating element defines a coiled heating element segment wound about the wick. This process may be repeated to produce multiple coiled heating element segments wound about the wick. A related method is also provided.

Apparatus and method for winding a substantially continuous heating element about a substantially continuous wick

The invention provides for an improved mirror scanning system for use with a millimeter wave imaging system. The mirror scanning system includes a pair of voice coil actuators aligned generally perpendicular to a mirror. The voice coils are intermittently energized pursuant to a predetermined frequency related to a desired resolution. A base supports a back plate that is generally disposed parallel to the mirror and secures the pair of voice coil actuators. A rod flexure is secured to a center yoke, or coil bobbin, of each of the respective voice coils and to a back side of the mirror so that the pair of rod flexures simultaneously exert a force on the mirror causing deflection thereon as the pair of voice coils are energized. Stationary position sensors are mounted adjacent to each cylinder so the sensor can determine to location of the cylinder, and hence the angle of the mirror.

Mirror scanning system

A laser cutting system, including a steering mirror assembly for directing a laser beam through a predetermined cutting path along a workpiece or substrate material. The steering mirror assembly includes a base, and a mirror pivotally supported on the base by a flexure assembly which confines pivotal movement of the mirror about a vertical Y-axis and/or about a horizontal X-axis. A pair of electrical actuator assemblies include movable bobbin assemblies connected to the mirror by control rod flexures at locations on the mirror which are spaced 90&#xb0; apart from one another. In operation, selective electrical energization of the actuator assemblies controls movement of the bobbin assemblies to pivot the mirror about the vertical Y-axis and/or about the horizontal X-axis throughout a number of angular orientations to thereby direct the laser beam through a predetermined cutting operation pattern along the substrate surface to cut materials from the substrate. The flexure arrangements which support the mirror on the base and which connect the bobbin assemblies to the mirror facilitate substantially frictionless movement of the bobbin assemblies and the mirror, which allows the mirror to pivot at high operational speeds during the cutting sequence.

Steering assembly with electromagnetic actuators

An optical transceiver antenna has a pair of cartridges supported by a pan/tilt mount. A lens at forward end of a cartridge interfaces light between an end of a light relay element retained by an axial deflection device and free space. The forward end of a cartridge also terminates first ends of actuator wires that are mutually rotationally displaced a distance of 90&#xb0; from one another in a plane normal to a boresight axis of the antenna. The actuator wires have second wire terminations at the axial deflection device which are mutually rotationally displaced a distance of 90&#xb0; from one another in a plane passing through the axial deflection device normal to the boresight axis. Heating currents are supplied to the actuator wires, causing their lengths to change, thereby flexing the axial deflection device and light relay element off boresight.

Active alignment system for free space optics

A cradle-configured interface for a hand-held blood glucose meter has a multi-electrical contact-containing battery door that enables blood glucose analysis data stored in the meter to be automatically downloaded to a modem within a meter cradle for transmission to a monitoring facility. Electrical contacts of the battery door are connected to conductors of the meter's printed circuit board when the battery door is closed. The cradle has spring-loaded probes connected to its internal modem and engaging the electrical contacts within the battery door when the meter is placed in the cradle. Upon sensing the meter in the cradle, the modem downloads blood sample analysis data stored in the meter into local memory and then transmits blood glucose analysis data to a downstream healthcare reporting site.

Blood glucose meter/modem interface arrangement

Pixel clock and beam scan timing of an acousto-optic scanner are controlled by an acoustic velocity-driven, phase locked loop containing an adjustable voltage controlled pixel clock generator, which is controlled by a detector that produces delayed and attenuated replica of the excitation waveform applied to an ATWL scanner used to scan a light beam across a workpiece. In a first embodiment of the invention, an end-of-cell transducer converts the pressure induced traveling lens into an electrical signal replica of the excitation input. In a second embodiment, an end-of-scan optical pick-off monitor is employed to detect the scanned optical spot as it crosses its field of view. Each pixel is spatially invariant to propagation velocity changes in the ATWL medium, so that as variations in temperature change the speed of the pressure-induced lens traveling from the excitation transducer to the end of the ATWL cell on each scan, the pixel clock is correspondingly slowed down or speeded up by the same proportional amount, to maintain registration in time and space.

Timing control in acousto-optic scanner based on acoustic velocity of traveling wave lens

An acoustic impedance-matching transformer includes a tapered acoustic energy transmission (metal) block, having an acoustic impedance less than that of a piezo-electric transducer in a metric direction toward that of the acoustic propagation medium of the waveguide, and by an amount that allows tailoring of the relative spatial dimensions of mating surfaces of the transducer and the block, so as to provide efficient broadband coupling of acoustic energy. The surface area of the end face of the block engaging the transducer is a corresponding fraction of the area of the transducer. The tapered block focuses acoustic energy toward the input aperture of the waveguide channel. The taper is determined in accordance with difference between the acoustic impedance of the aluminum block and that of a second acoustic wave propagation element, such as a quarter-wave section of plexiglass, interposed between the waveguide channel and the tapered block.

Stepped acoustic impedance-matching transformer for very narrow channel acoustic traveling wave lens waveguide

A solid state acoustic travelling wave lens comprises a thin core layer of acoustic and light transmissive material, such as crystalline quartz, compression-bonded between a pair of outer or cladding layers, such as fused silica, having an acoustic velocity that is only slightly higher than (e.g., less than five percent of) that of the core material. The acoustic mode field characteristic of the weakly guiding device contains no spatial variations caused by Fresnel diffraction in an unguided wave device. In a second embodiment, shear stress coupling between the core and cladding layers is inhibited by interposing very thin liquid boundary layers between the core layer and the cladding layers. Such thin liquid boundary layers, which are relatively more compressible than the core and cladding material, allow longitudinal waves to be transmitted across the core/cladding boundary (through the liquid), but prevent transmission of shear waves therebetween.

Index-guided solid acoustic traveling wave lens

An acoustic traveling wave lens structure for an acousto-optic scanner comprises a confined height fluid-containing channel, upon which a scanned optical beam to be modulated by a acoustic traveling wave is incident. The channel is bounded by spaced-apart walls that extend between a first end of the scanner channel, to which an acoustic transducer is coupled, and a second end of the channel that terminates an acoustic traveling wave launched from the acoustic transducer. The thickness of the channel is linearly tapered from the first end to the second end, so as to maintain a constant acoustic power density. To compensate for the attenuation in acoustic power through the water medium, the waveguide may be heated, to maintain the temperature of the liquid medium (water) within the waveguide channel within a prescribed temperature range over which the acoustic velocity remains substantially constant or undergoes a relatively small variation.

Constant power density acoustic traveling wave lens

A folded acoustic traveling wave lens arrangement imparts multiple passes of an incident optical beam through the traveling wave lens, and thereby effectively maximize utilization of acoustic power. A lens of optically transmissive bulk material, such as quartz, is disposed in the path of an incident light beam which is spatially scanned by a light beam deflector. The bulk material of the lens element has a reflective layer disposed upon at least one of its surfaces, and is configured such that an incident light beam undergoes multiple passes through the acoustic wavefront propagating through the lens, prior to emerging from the lens. Aberration in the emerging beam due to multiple passes through the bulk material is corrected by a pupil plane correction plate.

Growing community of inventors

Melbourne, FL, United States of America

Reeder N Ward