Positioners | Luminos

CORALIGN™ Positioners

Features

Luminos CORALIGN™ Positioners are so resolute and stable that you can easily align singlemode fibers with your hand on the micrometer and they will hold alignment for weeks. Luminos positioners were created with assembly workers and lab researchers at heart. They are the only positioners in the world to use Ratio Drive™ with standard micrometers, achieving a mechanical backlash that is 10X less than the limits of operator sensitivity. All other conventional manual stages on the market rely on differential micrometers for finest resolution tasks, which introduce 10X more backlash than the limits of operator sensitivity.

What does this 100 fold reduction in backlash really mean to the user? Simply stated, Luminos positioners do not require the usual “touch and release” approach to overcome backlash, enabling ease of use for high resolution single-mode beam alignment tasks. Customers consistently report that Luminos CORALIGN™ Positioners are the most stable they have ever used. They improve ergonomics, increase efficiency and ease of use by allowing you to rest your hand on the table in one position as all actuators are located neatly at one end of the stage. All this is possible because of a radical departure from conventional design to where the actuators no longer limit overall performance.

Intuitive, easy optical alignment without the traditional “touch and release” of other stages
Coincident rotation center located conveniently out in front of the stage for easy tooling placement
Compact, inline actuator design enables efficient user friendly manual adjustments, and a compact envelop when motorized
Fully damped internal flexure design for fast settling times that rival non-flexure stages – finesse over brute force stiffness
Patented linear dual-flexure Z Axis & exceptional 12.7mm (0.5") travel offer the straightness and smoothness of travel of an air-bearing
Manual, automated, semi-automated configurations available.
Actuators with onboard motion controllers reduce cost of automation
Patented Ratio Drive™ system affords superior resolution and improved actuator stability.
Small linear footprint makes it practical to design multiple unit workstations.
Damped exterior common shell provides superior vibration and touch insensitivity.
Lightweight aluminum construction allows system to be moved easily by other motion equipment.
High mechanical stiffness Z-Axis moving frame affords rugged and stable alignment.
Accessories are available to allow complete system design and integration with your existing equipment.

Superior Performance

Luminos CORALIGN™ Positioners with standard micrometers have higher resolution than other systems on the market that require costly differential micrometers. Differential micrometers can only offer improved resolution at the cost of unwanted backlash and poorer stability, while in operation they must rely on the stability of 3 moving thread interfaces. Luminos quite deliberately incorporates the more stable single thread type micrometer and improves resolution and stability even further by adding Ratio Drive™.

Luminos CORALIGN™ Positioners use the Luminos patented Ratio Drive™ mechanism on the critical X & Y axes (orthogonal to the main optical Z axis). This unique approach provides significantly improved resolution and stability for critical optical alignment tasks. Luminos stages offer two levels of Ratio Drive™ on the X & Y axes: Higher Resolution 5X offers 2.5mm of actuator controlled travel with no coarse adjustment, while the Highest Resolution 25X offers 0.5mm of actuator controlled travel plus an additional 2mm of manual course adjustment. With all other stage designs, if the actuators drift from mechanical or heating effects then the stage drifts also. Luminos CORALIGN™ Positioners with Ratio Drive™ and standard micrometers resolve to 10nm in X and Y with less than 1nm of internal backlash from the leverage mechanism. Compare this to other manufacturers who rely on less stable differential micrometers with typical 70nm resolution and 1µm backlash (1,000 times more than a Luminos positioner). The roll, yaw, and pitch axes also use the same near perfect leverage mechanism to transform linear motion from the actuators into extremely precise rotational movements at the output.

Stability

All Luminos CORALIGN™ Positioners are extremely stable, and are insensitive to vibration and temperature. Extensive internal damping is incorporated into each axis of the stage to virtually eliminate any resonance effects that are typically associated with other flexure stage designs. In an ordinary lab without an optical table, normal temperature fluctuations result in only 0.03 dB variation with no drift in a typical singlemode alignment for over a month. See Positioner Stability for more information.

Automation

With the advanced Luminos design, upgrading to automation is easy. By using Ratio Drive™, the resolution of inexpensive stepping motor actuators is improved to a level where it is not necessary to add additional fine movement stages like a Piezo. The stepper motor option provides resolution to 4 nanometers on the X and Y axes and XYZ travel range up 2.5 x 2.5 x 12.7 mm. For more information on the actuators used for automation of Luminos positioners go to Actuator / Stepper Motor Specifications.

Positioner Selection Guide

Available in Linear, Rotational, and Linear/Rotational Hybrids, Luminos Positioners can be deployed in numerous applications. See below for a summary of all configurations.

Direct

25x

Drive

Ratio

IX00X

IX000

IX005

25x

Ratio

IX000

IX005

Roll