YPN visited TNO in Delft
The Young Precision Network (YPN) - part of the DSPE community - organises events for young professionals and students. Thursday October 26th, YPN visited TNO at the TU Delft campus and it was a great success.
TNO Delft develops optomechatronic systems for applications in space, ‘big science’, quantum technology, smart industry and the semiconductor industry. Examples include earth observation spectrometers, laser satellite communication terminals, modules and equipment for the semiconductor industry, focusing on sensors, metrology and lithography concepts, and a wide range of sensors and actuator systems for the big science facilities.
During the visit, several enthousiastic employees of TNO Delft took us on a journey along the broad spectrum of projects they work on, in the form of a brief company introduction, three in-depth tech talks and a facility tour. We learned about alignment systems that can spot a house fly on the Euromast while standing in Groningen (Dick de Bruijn), the coolness and utter complexity of clamping mechanisms in vacuum (Freek Molkenboer), getting the grips on a ultra-precise convex 244mm aspherical secondary mirror with 36 active suspension points and doing on-site research in Hawaii (former YPN board member Arjo Bos), and – last but not least – celebrating achievements with colleagues!
In their impressive repertoire, TNO has been able to crack every case they received. A small selection of their success was shown during the facility tour, from extremely large telescope mirror suspensions to enormous blocks of highly fragile ceramic and an early prototype of an Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) metrology system used to achieve high resolution chip inspection. The optical machining and inspection department is able to keep up with the high demands of TNO’s customers with specialized (and classified) polishing techniques and a machine that can measure the surface flatness of a mirror of any shape within 15 mintues.
All in all, plenty to talk about with fellow Precision Engineers over drinks and bites, which concluded the visit to TNO Delft.
We thank TNO for all their efforts and the excellent organisation of the visit!
