Rapid-prototyping a tabletop integral field spectrograph

We successfully rapid-prototyped a mostly off-the-shelf, partially 3D-printed pathfinder version of an integral field spectrograph (IFS) in order to compress the design/build/test schedule of a final, mostly-custom IFS, by accelerating the start date of data pipeline development, thus allowing this development to progress in parallel with the design, procurement, fabrication, and alignment of the final IFS version. This parallel-path development schedule enabled us to successfully design, build, align, test, and extract a data cube from the new IFS within only 1 year, even in the face of several design setbacks. We have begun using the now-functional IFS for development of IFS sensing and control algorithms, and have also begun implementing motorized alignment upgrades that enable the systematic characterization of the tolerance (or required compensation) of its data cube extraction to misaligned images, in support of NASA’s WFIRST and PISCES IFS.