Poster details
» A stainless-steel mandrel for slumping glass x-ray mirrors
Presenter: Stephen O'Dell
We have fabricated a precision full-cylinder stainless-steel mandrel at Marshall Space Flight Center. The mandrel is figured for a 30-cm-diameter primary (paraboloid) mirror of an 840-cm focal-lengthWolter-1 telescope. We have developed this mandrel for experiments in slumping—thermal forming at about 600°C—of glass mirror segments at Goddard Space Flight Center, in support of NASA’s participation in the International X-ray Observatory (IXO). Precision turning of stainless-steel mandrels may offer a low-cost alternative to conventional figuring of fused-silica or other glassy forming mandrels. We report on the fabrication, metrology, and performance of this first mandrel; then we discuss plans and goals for stainless-steel mandrel technology.
Coauthors:- Mikhail V. Gubarev
- William D. Jones
- Thomas J. Kester
- Charles W. Griffith
- William W. Zhang
- Timo T. Saha
- Kai-Wing Chan