LAUSR

Abstract The surface accuracy and quality of a mirror blank determine the performance of coated optical mirror; it is thus vital to find a simple and efficient way to process the mirror blank. In this research, we used the gas jet to impinge on the liquid pool of epoxy resin to form a specific curved surface and then solidified it as a mirror blank. The relationship between the curved surface shape and the process parameters of gas jet has been studied. By changing the parameters, i.e. gas flow rate and nozzle height, we conducted experiments of gas jet forming and employed CMM to measure the curved surfaces. Through fitting the measured data with curve equations, we find that the method of gas jet forming can form high-order aspherical and paraboloid surfaces on the liquid, and the surface roughness can reach 36.37 nm. The numerical simulation can effectively study the principle of the gas jet forming and predict the shape of the curved surface formed by the gas jet.