Research and application on the key techniques of conformal vibration polishing on optics

Abstract In computer controlled optical surfacing (CCOS), the small-sized polishing tools make the process exhibit a weaker material removal capability and exacerbate the deterioration of mid-spatial frequency (MSF) errors. Consequently, this paper presents a full-aperture conformal vibration polishing method incorporating short-stroke forced vibration. The realization mechanism, removal ability and machining effect of it were expounded separately, and verified by experiments. The experimental results show that conformal vibration polishing can achieve uniform smoothing of the MSF errors without destroying the original surface shape while efficiently removing the materials. The conformal vibration polishing proposed in this paper not only extends the existing processing field, but also provides a new approach for the suppression of MSF errors.