Windows, mirrors, filters, sight glass, wedges, tooling, and reticles manufactured across medical, laser, aerospace, defense, sensor, inspection, and process-control systems.
IRD manufactures to your print. Material, flatness, parallelism, surface quality, edge condition, patterned features, and coating are reviewed as one finished component before quoting — and on a new design that review is free of charge.
A flat optic may transmit, reflect, protect, filter, measure, or establish a reference. The controlling specification changes with the job.
Four jobs a plane surface does inside a system — transmit, reflect, filter, and reference — each with a different attribute carrying the tolerance.
Plane-parallel plates for UV, visible, and IR transmission, sensor protection, debris shielding, and environmental separation between a process and the optics watching it.
From .100″ to 16″ high and .008″ to 4″ thick
First- and second-surface flat and laser mirrors for interferometry, beam steering, folding, and imaging — from protected aluminium through high-laser-damage-threshold stacks, certified to whatever data the program requires.
Filter glass from Schott, Kopp, Ohara, Hoya, and others, plus in-house thin-film coatings from UV through IR, for transmission, blocking, and wavelength-control requirements.
Chrome, precious-metal, and aluminium patterns for filters, masks, reference gauges, and datums, and precision reticles for semiconductor, inspection, and medical systems.
Details down to sub-micron line widthsA globally positioned high-power laser OEM was fighting quality, delivery, and pricing problems on a very unique large surface area precision mirror. The result was frequent line downs, long cycle times, and no way to patch the supply chain and ramp production. IRD designed a custom production cell around the part, invested in the unique equipment needed to hold the quality specification, and cross-trained employees and hired new technicians so the cell was staffed to run it. IRD met the target price and the quality requirement while cutting cycle time by 800%, and remains the preferred supplier for the component to this day — one of only a few qualified for it anywhere in the world.
Talk to an applications expert
Flatness and parallelism are separate controls, and both are lost more often to fixturing and handling than to the polish itself. These are the controls IRD holds across a production run.
Double-side lapping machines both faces at once between a floating upper plate and a lower plate, doubling throughput and — more importantly — avoiding the clamping stress that single-side work introduces. IRD's published lapping capability runs to ±.000010 inch on flatness and parallelism.
Pitch plates hold a semi-fluid surface, grooved by hand or machine so the polishing slurry can reach the whole component. The method both reaches Ra under 5 Å and minimises the surface deformation at the edge roll that makes an otherwise flat part unusable near its aperture edge.
Pitch polishing covers components from 20 mm to 600 mm in diameterThe inspection floor runs Zygo GPI, Zygo NewView, Zygo Verifier, Nikon 6D, and Wyko 6000 PS interferometers, alongside OGP CNC vision inspection and toolmaker's scopes. A flatness number without a stated measurement condition is a claim, not a specification.
Masking, fixture contact, edge handling, and witness sampling for a patterned or coated flat all depend on decisions made before the surface exists. Deciding them afterwards is how a good polish becomes a rejected coating run.
Flatness and parallelism are separate controls. State the wavelength, aperture, measurement method, and mounting condition with the drawing.
| Attribute | Typical | Best case | Application note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Surface flatness | 1 wave | < 1/20 wave | Wavefront-critical faces and mirrors |
| Parallelism | 30 arc sec | < 5 arc sec | Windows, filters, and beam-steering optics |
| Surface roughness | Ra < 1 µin | Ra < 5 Å | High-energy and scatter-sensitive applications |
| Dimensional tolerance | ±.005″ | ±.0001″ | Finished geometry and mounting interfaces |
These are IRD's published process capability figures across materials and geometries, not a guarantee for a given print. Material, aperture, thickness, and inspection method all move them, and every surface is quoted individually. IRD's published flatness and parallelism values do not state a reference wavelength or measurement condition — send yours and the team will confirm against those rather than against a datasheet.
One cell controls the full route — blanking, machining, grinding, lapping, polishing, patterning, coating, and inspection — so a handoff between two suppliers does not undo the surface the previous process created. The cell owns the part from raw-material order to shipment.
The IRD AdvantageUse these lists to frame the first review. The drawing, environment, performance requirement, inspection method, and volume determine the final route.
A web page is hard to attach to a review packet. These are IRD's own published technical documents on the questions this page raises.
The mirror families IRD manufactures for beam steering, folding, interferometry, imaging, and high-power industrial laser systems, and the sole-source relationships behind them.
ArticleTechnical articleHow long-pass, short-pass, bandpass, notch, and dichroic filters differ, and when filter glass, a thin-film coating, or a combination of both is the right route.
ArticleTechnical articleHow MIL-PRF-13830B scratch and dig numbers are assigned and counted, where ISO 10110 differs, and why over-specifying surface quality moves cost without moving function.
ArticleThe finished component often crosses product categories. These pages cover the nearest materials, processes, and program contexts.
Send the drawing with the aperture and thickness, the flatness and parallelism requirements and the wavelength and method they are measured at, scratch-dig per face, substrate, any pattern or coating, mounting condition, annual volume, and schedule. For a new design, the technical team runs a no-cost Design for Manufacturability review before quoting.
Or call 320.693.7217. If you are qualifying a second source for a flat already in production, say so — IRD asks for that work directly.