Erdil et al. present an adjustable slit, made primarily from 3D printed parts and actuated by electromagnetic coils. Adjustable apertures are a key feature of many optical systems, but as moving parts they often add significant cost, bulk, and vibration to the device they are used in. The design presented here keeps cost down by using simple parts that can be easily obtained or 3D printed using two different thermoplastics (TPU and PLA). The bill-of-materials cost is estimated to be around one dollar, while the device takes around an hour to assemble. Helpfully, the authors explain that while building one takes an hour, weeks of iteration were required to make sure there was a high yield when producing the devices. A detailed simulation of electrical, mechanical, and optical properties of the device is backed up with experimental characterisation, suggesting good performance on the bench. The authors have previously done fatique studies over 100 cycles, and suggest they expect longevity to be better than this in the slit device they present. While this adjustable slit would form a very helpful addition to the growing library of open hardware designs for optics, the authors do not share their data publicly and instead invite interested parties to make reasonable requests to the authors if they wish to replicate these results. 

---

---

 Add Comment

You must log in to add comments.