2022 is the UN International Year of Glass
As Torr Scientific uses a wide range of ‘glassy’ materials in the construction of our products, we felt we should mention this event. The United Nations declared 2022 to be the International Year of Glass to celebrate the essential role glass has in...
Eggs
Aside from the rather gruesome events described by the New Testament, Easter is more commonly associated with happy concepts: the approach of spring, fluffy bunnies, pancakes and, of course, Easter eggs. For this article, we’re going to stay well away from...
Witch’s Hat
As part of TSL’s ongoing investigation into the relationship between surface flatness and transmitted wavefront error (TWE), we spotted the TWE dataset below whose anomalously high peak has a distinct touch of the Halloween about it. Comparison with maps of surface...
CERN Windows
Torr were recently commissioned to produce some special windows for CERN. The windows were welded into a pre-machined body and then subjected to a high-pressure test. The application for the windows is the Beam-Gas-Curtain instrument (wepb16.pdf (cern.ch)). The LHC...
Laser Induced Damage Threshold (LIDT)
Work is ongoing at TSL to better understand and characterize the LIDT (laser-induced damage threshold) of our coated viewports and optics. We currently specify a CW (continuous wave) threshold of 500 W cm-2 at 530 nm. For each individual customer requirement, this...
Plasmaquest
Torr Scientific were recently very pleased to help out our friends in the Department of Mechanical Engineering Sciences at University of Surrey with some coating metrology. As part of a research project supervised by Dr Mark Baker, Reader in Surface Science and...
Rubidium Dosing Cell
The attached picture shows a rubidium vacuum cell that was recently manufactured in the glass shop at Torr scientific. It is shown in the upside down position.Once the cell is placed under vacuum, a small steel bar (which lives in the small side port) will be moved...
Brewster Windows
A Brewster window is an optic placed in the path of an optical beam at a special angle, this angle allows p-polarised light to enter and exit the window almost without any transmission losses. Any s-polarised light is reflected and this produces a fully polarised...
Microspike Biosensor Coating
Microspike biosensors are minimally invasive sensors which can be used to measure metabolites, biomarkers and drugs in the interstitial fluid. The microspike substrate material is polycarbonate. The metallic electrodes can be functionalised with a variety of coatings....
X-Ray Anodes
Torr Scientific has been manufacturing and refurbishing X-ray anodes for 22 years. We can manufacture from scratch from the customer’s drawing, or we can refurbish or repair to restore an anode to its original condition, if not better. Our engineers can design an...