In 2017, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) awarded a contract for the Polishing, integration and final figuring of the Segment Assemblies of the primary mirror (M1) for the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) to Safran Reosc. Since then, the design and commissioning of a production unit dedicated to ELT M1 has been accomplished and the plant has been producing many mirrors since spring 2022. We will introduce the smart factory, its processes and their automation that enabled reaching the current throughput of one mirror per day. We will then present the status of the project, some lessons learned and highlight the successes that have been achieved so far.
In 2017, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) awarded a contract for the Polishing, integration and final figuring of the Segment Assemblies of the primary mirror (M1) for the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) to Safran Reosc. Since then, the design and commissioning of a production unit dedicated for ELT M1 has been accomplished and the plant have been producing many mirrors since spring 2022. We present the status of the project, some lessons learned and highlight the successes that have been achieved so far.
In 2017, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) awarded a contract for the manufacturing of the segments of the primary mirror for the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) to Safran Reosc. Since then, we designed a production unit dedicated for ELT M1. From spherical mirror blanks, we first glue 39 pads per segment. We then shape, polish and cut the segments with 133 different off-axis aspheric definitions. We finish them to nanometer accuracy using ion beam figuring and a fully automated interferometric test bench. Now manufacturing has begun, we present the solutions and methods that we developed to manufacture more than one segment per day.
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