Products
GEMINI South: CILAS System, 416-channel driver
Developed in 2006 for the Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics (MCAO) program, this 416-channel system, together with a 208- and 293-channel driver remain in use today. In 2024, we shipped custom boards as a drop-in replacement to support their migration to a Xinetics mirror at the DM0 conjugate.
Boston Micromachines Corp.: KILO, Multi, X-Driver & Mini
We developed the 4K KILO driver, initially used to support the ‘Tweeter’ DM in the Gemini Planetary Imager (GPI) program. The modular chassis also supports the BMC 492-actuator and 1020-actuator MEMS mirrors, including a low-latency variant that can update a 1K figure at 30 KHz with 15 us. latency. The MULTI 140-channel driver interfaces via USB, and the X-Driver is a high-speed version for their 140-actuator DM, using a CameraLink interface, operating at frame rates exceeding 400 KHz.
Fraunhofer IOF: 64-channel HV power amplifier
Custom copper heat sinks enabled forced-air cooling of 4x 2x 33 W/channel amplifiers on each 8Ux 160mm board. An LED array ‘heat map’ display showed any heat sink exceeding a user-defined temperature threshold. We integrated this system in Jena, Germany - supporting 300 Vpp at 50 KHz into a 6.6 nF load per channel for their experimental DMs.
Herzberg Institute: NRCC: Power Supply and Fan Assy.
This ‘box-build’ design was commissioned to replace a fan tray and 2 rack-mount high-voltage power supplies, saving 3U height of rack space. It was used in conjunction with our 97-channel CILAS driver, to drive the “Woofer” DM in the Gemini Planetary Imager (GPI) program. Because only a few boards were populated in that chassis, fan cooling was needed only on the left side, enabling this compact packaging.
Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory: 64-channel HV amplifier for a CILAS DM
Seeing a need for a better high-voltage (+/-400V) amplifier, we simulated then prototyped a discrete Class B amplifier circuit, as an Internal R&D project, and presented a white paper at the 2012 SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation conference. Adjustable sink and source drive current supports controlled slew rate for CILAS DMs, and the nominal low power dissipation of 40 mW/ channel is of particular benefit in extreme-AO applications. In 2017, we delivered a 64-channel amplifier based on this design to CTIO, for use with their CILAS BIM-60 deformable mirror.
3rd Generation Driver - Xinetics DMs
Our 3rd generation Xinetics (Northrop/ AOX) DM Driver architecture was presented in a poster session at the 2016 SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation conference. Together with the scalable TVS mapping subassembly (not shown) which limits inter-actuator stroke to half-scale, detection of clamp conditions, series fuses, and bias network, we protect Xinetics DMs in multiple ways. Developed for the Gemini MCAO upgrade to a 349-channel DM, we also configured 2 other systems for another customer, supporting a 441-channel DM (shown here) and dual-97 channel DMs.
Boston Micromachines Corp.:
Filter Board + High Speed Dithering
The DACs (digital-to-analog converters) we use for the KILO systems are 14-bit precision, but we are able to achieve virtual 16-bit precision by toggling between adjacent 14-bit values at 25%, 50%, and 75% duty cycle, known as pulse-width modulation or ‘dithering’. By writing each channel at 30 KHz, the resulting analog ripple frequency is 7.5 KHz, which is attenuated by the 256-channel RC filter board, set for a cutoff frequency of 1.2 KHz.