LightMachinery has created a set of free cloud based optical design tools that range from simple calculators to sophisticated design software. Enjoy!

Optical Design Tools

  • Etalon Designer -One of our most popular and useful design tools, provides a close approximation to the performance you can expect from our Fabry Perot Etalon
  • Multi-Etalon Designer
  • Lens Design Cloud
  • Thin Film Cloud -This thin film coating design software is becoming very powerful with very fast optimization. Keep checking back for further enhancements
  • More Optical Design Tools
    • Dual Etalon Designer -For when etalons don't quite cut it
    • Etalon Tuning -How fast will my etalon peaks move with temperature? Also a useful chart view of material parameters.
    • Fizeau Wedge Designer -A simple wedge interferometer, adjust the parameters and observe the expected output
    • Frequency Conversion -Conversion for units of wavelength, frequency, energy, pulse duration and time-bandwidth product
    • Fresnel Rhombs -An unusual polarization component, the Fresnel Rhomb can act like a waveplate but works without birefingent materials.
    • Gaussian Beam Propagation -Gaussian beam propagation through lens systems, this is a very useful and versatile tool for designing laser beam delivery systems
    • Grating Spectrometers -LightMachinery does not manufacture grating based spectrometers but we thought this would be interesting to add so that performance can be compared to VIPA and etalon based spectrometers.
    • Laser Beam Shaper -Design an aspheric surface to modify a gaussian beam into a top hat beam
    • Laser Resonators -Adjust resonator parameters to determine mode size and stability
    • Index & Reflection -A summary of material properties, index and Fresnel reflection at various angles
    • Optics Unit Conversion
    • Percent vs dB -Convert Percentage to dB (power or amplitude)
    • Prism Designer
    • Simple Lens Designer -A thick lens simulation gives a very nice approximation to actual lens performance at low angles
    • VIPA Designer -VIPA etalons are becoming the new standard for hyperfine spectral analysis. This design tool allows users to investigate the properties of VIPA's (read the user's guide as well)
    • Waveplate
    • Field Widened Michelson (Beta) -A helpful tool to calculate the arm lengths of a field widened Michelson interferometer.
    • Etalon Pulse Stretching (Beta)
  • Library -We have collected information from our own staff of experts and also bookmarked information on the web that is reliable and we can use on a daily basis.

Let us know if you have any suggestions for improvements

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Optics Catalog

Most of the optics we make are custom made but we still have an interesting catalog.  Check it out! 

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Custom Optics

Learn more about our custom optics (and see some pictures of exotic creations)