Page 147 - Photodetection and Measurement - Maximizing Performance in Optical Systems

Useful Electronic Circuits and Construction Techniques to Get You Going

140 Chapter Six

LED leads: connect and
power up during polishing

Tight reamed hole
for LED

Mounting and polishing Two hard pads
jig: underside view (e.g., glass slides,
carbide cutters)
Figure 6.13 Removing the lens from an LED is a five-
minute job if you have a polishing jig. A “three-point”
support gives quick and controllable results. Ideally,
power up the LED during polishing to be sure you
haven’t planed off the wire-bond!

This brief collection of techniques has been designed to quickly get the simple
optics lab jobs done, to allow a high flux of didactic experiments. There is little
merit in planning a new idea for months, ordering machined parts, and pur-
chasing some micromanipulators, only to find ten minutes after switch-on that
the whole idea was half-baked. Yet this is a common occurrence in university
and industrial labs. In my opinion most novel ideas should first be tested with
whatever bits and pieces you have, on the kitchen table if necessary. With a very
modest collection of tools, those first sixty minutes can provide the biggest frac-
tion of what there is to learn, and a number of such experiments provides many
occasions to learn.

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