ATM Bartelized CCD Robo-Foucault success!

["James Lerch" <jlerch1@tampabay.rr.com>]

Greetings all,

Just returned from the Mirror lab, after testing several different mirrors
on the recently completed Stepper controlled Foucault platform.  I can say
it is a joy to use!  Yea, in its present state it doesn't bring anything new
to the table, but it has great possibilities!

One of the interesting, and unforeseen, effects is that of cutting in/out
the knife edge.  With both zones under measurement blacked out by the knife
edge, slowly stepping in the knife edge until the faintest bit of light was
seen in the zone, as displayed on the 25" TV, resulted in an incredible
experience! The knife edge only steps in .00025" increments, but one step
was enough to go from black, to the faintest bit of gray.  It was then an
easy exercise of determining if we were at the zone position as either both
zones lit up or they didn't.  On a 10" F4 even the outer zones were easily
discernable to with in .002"!

Another nice feature is comfortably sitting in a chair, watching a TV, while
remotely controlling the platform.  Its nice not to see the image wiggle
while you twist knobs :)

Since I have nearly 4" of travel in both axis, I think my next goal is to
figure out how to perform a Caustic test.  Anyone have any recommendations?
I found one web page @
http://mustang.introweb.nl/~joboosti/caustic/cp0.htm#page that details the
process.  Do any of the popular applications support Caustic Points data?

I've setup a web page detailing the project on my home page, its Item 11.1
Robo-Foucault (yea, its a corny :) )

Take Care,
James Lerch
http://Lerch.yi.org/atm