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Tips and tricks for mirror making
Copyright © Stathis Kafalis, all rights reserved

| ToolRough GrindingFine GrindingPolishingParabolizing | Pfeiltiefe Messen | Bilder zum Schleifen | Pechhaut Herstellung |

Tool: 

For grinding and polishing the mirror, a counterpart is required, generally called grinding tool. It must be thick and stable enough to maintain its shape, water-resistant, and must not crumble or scratch the mirror during fine grinding and polishing. The following types have proven effective:

Rough Grinding:

The first step involves using coarse silicon carbide, or simply "grit" (grain size #80, #60 for larger mirrors), to create the necessary depression in the blank. The sagitta t (depression in the center) is calculated as: t = ROC - √(ROC² - 1/4 * D² ) where ROC = radius of curvature = 2 * focal length and D = mirror diameter.

Example: A mirror with a diameter of D=250 mm and an aperture ratio of f/5 has a focal length of f=1250 mm and therefore a radius of curvature of ROC=2500 mm. The sagitta is calculated as t=3.13 mm.

Details on determining and measuring the sagitta using calipers or a lamp test can be found here.
Images of rough and fine grinding are available here.

Larger mirrors are often pregenedated with an angle grinder to save time, effort, and abrasives (observe safety precautions!). See details under 14" ultra-thin mirror.

Fine Grinding:

The fine grinding process serves to smooth the surface without significantly altering the existing radius of curvature. Each finer grit is used until the pits created by the previous grit are completely removed. 

Polishing:

The sole purpose of polishing is, to remove the pits left over from the fine grinding process. For this, a 4-8 mm thick layer of pitch is poured onto the tool and fitted to the mirror. See the image description for the pitch lap preparation. During the process, the polishing particles are partially pressed into the pitch and cut through the glass like tens of thousands of microscopic knives. The goal is to choose the pitch layer shape and working method so that the center and the edge are polished to the same degree, thus ensuring the mirror remains spherical. 

Parabolizing:

In a parabolic mirror, the center of the mirror has a shorter focal length than the edge. With a moving light source, the difference in radius of curvature (ROC) between the center and edge of the mirror is D ROC = 1/8* D2/ROC, where D = mirror diameter and ROC = radius of curvature = 2 * f = twice the focal length. For a mirror with D = 200 mm and f = 1200 mm, ROC = 2400 mm is D ROC = 2.08 mm. Starting with an approximately spherical mirror, this can be achieved by further polishing the center to deepen it. There are basically two possible methods for this:

1. Classic Method: The pitch lap has the same size as the mirror. You polish the surface with long strokes and a lateral overhang. The longer the stroke and the greater the lateral overhang, the more the action is concentrated in the center (just like with coarse grinding). In extreme cases, this results in a hole in the center, and the rest remains spherical. If the strokes are too short, the mirror remains spherical, or in the worst case, develops a lagging edge. The goal is to find the correct stroke length and the correct variation of these strokes to develop the correction as evenly as possible (without zones). To prevent zone formation, you can chip away the pitch layer at the edge in a star shape.

2. Subdiameter Startool and TOT: This method is also suitable for parabolizing large mirrors. A "subdiameter Startool" is a pitch lap approximately 35-50% of the mirror's diameter, with increasingly wider channels towards the edge (see 15 cm tool on a 36 cm mirror, or 25 cm tool on a 50 cm mirror). The pitch lap acts thus strongest in the center and progressively weaker towards the edge. This creates a smoother transition to the individual zones and therefore prevents zonal errors.

Foucault Test: Understanding the Foucault test is essential, especially for parabolizing. The shadows on the mirror surface indicate differences in the radius of curvature, meaning deviations from a perfect sphere. Therefore, one must get used to thinking in terms of "longer" and "shorter" radii of curvature, rather than "raised" or "sunken." For more details, see Foucault Tester and Understanding Foucault. The Foucault analysis software calculates the absolute level differences within the glass. I recommend the program FigureXP by James Lerch. For photographic analysis of the Foucault images, use the program Foucault XL (direct download) by Horia. See also the Astrotreff article Photographic Foucault Measurement.

There are no universally applicable rules on which stroke achieves the desired result, as there are too many influencing factors, such as pitch hardness, pitch lap shape, pitch lap size and thickness, room temperature, and the amount of polishing compound used. Ultimately, the technique employed by mirror makers is highly individual, and they develop their own methods, measuring at increasingly shorter intervals, to learn the effect of each stroke. Towards the end, one is more occupied with measuring than polishing. This dance for the last ten-thousandths of a millimeter is arguably the most exciting phase in mirror making.

Fine-tuning: Once the parabolic shape is nearly achieved, the remaining zones can be precisely corrected using Alois's minitool method without risking further distortion of the overall curve. For this, a small polishing tool ("minitool") is made that corresponds to approximately 2/3 of the zone width to be corrected (see Minitool Construction). You make slow, circular movements along the raised zone. The amplitude is adjusted so that the edge of the tool reaches the edge of the zone. Unlike back-and-forth strokes along the zone, these circular movements maintain the high surface smoothness. See Astrotreff article 1 and article 2 for details .

Let it crunch and good luck!

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