Reduced Cost Fabrication of Optical Sapphire Hyper-hemispheres for Submarine Masts

The objective of the proposal is to reduce the cost of fabrication of sapphire optical hyper-hemispheres for submarine masts. Due to the nature of sapphire, deriving complex geometries from grown boules using current conventional fabrication techniques is one of the major contributors to cost. Removing excess material requires long diamond grinding cycles. New advances in ultrasonics have been incorporated by machine tool manufacturers to couple this technology with conventional diamond grinding techniques in order to accomplish orders of magnitude increases in stock removal with no impact on surface finish and sub-surface damage.