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IRD Glass manufactures many different sizes and shapes of technical glass and optical components using many varied and unique grinding techniques to hold precise dimensional tolerances and surface finish requirements.

They make many different sizes of tubes and pedestals for the pressure transducer sensor industry as well as other industrial applications. The pedestals are precision ground on CNC Lathes, with the ends lapped and polished to better than .000004" flat on the ends. The tubes, produced in volumes approaching ½ million per year, are controlled to tight length tolerances, polished on the ends to better than .000004" flat, and fire polished on one end, while maintaining a very tight scratch and dig tolerance. They also manufacture precision polished and ground glass rods, used primarily as tooling, spacers or masks in precision applications.

They also specialize in custom designed polishing tools using optical grade glass in sizes ranging form 20" wedges to ¼" flats. Several companies purchase custom diffusing and transmissive inspection stages from IRD, including stages with grooves and through holes for vacuum applications. Ultra-precision spacers made from ultra-low expansion materials such as Schott Zerodur, ULE and ceramics and other glass and ceramic tooling components are manufactured on a variety of equipment while quality is maintained using a series of in-process control inspections on any of several specially designed systems.

IRD Glass makes precision substrates with a variety of surface finishes ranging from rough ground (20 micro inch Ra) to lapped (4-8 micro inch Ra) to polished (better than 1 micro inch Ra). Substrates are available from many different materials, including Zerodur, nBk-7, nSK-5, Pyrex, ceramic, and many other specialty materials (optical and non-optical). They hold tight flatness, parallelism, and dimensional tolerances; one of the most demanding products has been manufactured continuously over the past 18 years for ring laser gyro applications in the aerospace industry. They also hold tight surface finish requirements for bonding applications in the circuit board testing arena.

Please reference the IRD Glass website for other typical and best tolerances for some standard operations.

For additional information please visit our website at http://www.irdglass.com or call us at (320) 693-7217