New Scale Mini Fiber Positioners Enter Full Production

Micropositioning stage developer New Scale Technologies Inc. has moved its miniature Cobra fiber positioners into full production, manufacturing 200 units per month for the Subaru Telescope Prime Focus Spectrograph.

New Scale Technologies has achieved full-scale production of 200 Cobra positioners per month at its advanced manufacturing center near Rochester, N.Y. Mature processes for production and testing enable New Scale to support fiber spectrometer programs with the volume, consistency and quality these endeavors require. Courtesy of New Scale.

New Scale will deliver a total of 2,550 Cobra positioners to the California Institute of Technology by June 2017. Deployed in a close-packed array, the Cobra positioners rapidly configure an array of fibers in the prime focus of the telescope to a precision of 5 μm. They enable the Subaru Telescope to conduct a variety of targeted surveys for studies of dark energy, galaxy evolution and galactic archaeology.

This production milestone was reached after eight years of research and development.

New Scale is a developer of closed-loop positioning solutions.