Abstract: An optical workstation comprising an optical breadboard supported by a frame, the frame comprising a plurality of upstanding legs interconnected by laterally extending cross-beams, the cross-beams defining a space into which the optical breadboard is received and laterally enclosed. By laterally enclosing the optical breadboard with the cross-beam frame elements, side protection for the optical breadboard is provided, thus protecting it from lateral impacts against which conventional damping mounts are not effective. In addition, since the cross-beams are part of the frame structure, they provide a stable and rigid platform for mounting optical and other components at the very edge of the workstation outside the optical breadboard area. Anchor points in the cross-beams are provided for this purpose.

Abstract: There is provided an apparatus for, and a method of, driving a plurality of uniaxial positioning elements of positioning stages to perform an automated search to find a signal in a multi-dimensional search space having a dimensionality equal to the number of alignment axes. The automated signal location is achieved by scanning over a search pattern defined by a succession of n−1 dimensional closed hyper-surfaces in an n-dimensional search-space, where n is the number of positioning axes involved in the alignment process. In an embodiment of the invention hyper-cubes are used as the hyper-surfaces and the search path follows a hyper-spiral track over hyper-surfaces of incrementally increasing size.

Abstract: An optical workstation comprising an optical breadboard supported by a frame, the frame comprising a plurality of upstanding legs interconnected by laterally extending cross-beams, the cross-beams defining a space into which the optical breadboard is received and laterally enclosed. By laterally enclosing the optical breadboard with the cross-beam frame elements, side protection for the optical breadboard is provided, thus protecting it from lateral impacts against which conventional damping mounts are not effective. In addition, since the cross-beams are part of the frame structure, they provide a stable and rigid platform for mounting optical and other components at the very edge of the workstation outside the optical breadboard area. Anchor points in the cross-beams are provided for this purpose.

Abstract: A mechanism for a multi-axis flexure positioner includes a fixed part and a movable part (7), the movable part (7) being connected to the fixed part via a plurality of transmission means, one for each axis, for transmitting actuation forces for the respective axes to the movable part (7). The transmission means for each axis includes a flexure member (2,3,8) arranged to transmit actuation forces for that axis to the movable part (7) and to flex between the fixed part and the movable part in response to actuation forces associated with the or each other axis. There are three flexure members (2,3,8) arranged to extend along three mutually-perpendicular axes so that each flexure member (2,3,8) is flexible along the axes of extent of the other two flexure members (2,3,8). Each of the three flexure members (2,3,8) comprises a pair of flexure linkages arranged to extend parallel to each other, the three pairs of linkages thus defining three mutually-perpendicular planes.