Spectral Applied Research is a custom optics house based in Ontario, Canada. My company was lucky enough to find out about them through one of our customers, and we have been working with them now for about 5 years. Spectral has a history of making extremely reliable opto-mechanical instruments, like the LMM-5 laser launch, as evidenced by one of their systems being used in outer space (think about the shaking/vibrations of a missile launch!)
On the image at left, you can see an LMM that has just taken a ride in my airplane. What’s amazing about these units is that I’ve had our demo system driven, flown and shipped all over northern California for several years, and have never had to realign the system! If you own or operate a laser launch equipped microscope, you understand what a feat this truly is. I have some customers who realign their launch each week.
One of the other cool products Spectral has is a modification for the Yokagawa spinning disk. In essence, Spectral takes a stock CSU, and modifies it to perform far better than the original design. Over time these modifications have become more extensive, to the point now where Spectral has configured a unit for near IR imaging! The video below is a great example, wherein a neuronal tissue section (brain slice) was imaged using LiCor’s IRDye 800 CW.You simply can’t do this on a stock CSU-X1.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRY3WqWQTPs
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