Author: Tony Distasio

I'm an optical engineer with a practical, hands-on approach to optics. I've worked in applied optics for a long time, in industry, in academic environments, and at several major astronomical observatories. My work experience includes: equipment design, fabrication, integration, calibration, and documentation. My strongest areas of expertise are in creating new instrumentation for large telescopes, optics manufacturing, and doing on-site optical alignment and tooling work. I also worked as a manufacturing engineer. I now own a consulting company, "Distasio Optical Documentation". We provide website content management and create technical documents related to optical systems. I write technical documents about telescopes and other optical equipment. I'm currently writing a non-fiction book and also developing new optical tooling equipment.

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Allow Time For Proper Setup

There’s an “Old Saw” that technical types like to quote. It goes: “The first 90% of the job takes 10% of the time, while the last 10% of the job takes 90% of the time!” That may be true in some cases, but in the optics laboratory, the rule should be: “Allow 95% of the time for your initial equipment setup, before you ever take a measurement!” Setting up equipment and optics (from scratch) for a “serious” measurement task can take a long time.  That is just fine!  Plan for that setup time, when you plan your job in the lab. If you are lucky enough to have the setup ready to go, from a prior job, then maybe you are in good  shape, but usually optical testing setups are done “from scratch,”  because you might have just identified the need for it! I personally have spent a couple of days setting up for a serious measurement, which then required 5 minutes to complete. Basically, resist the temptation to do a fast, throw-it-all-together equipment setup, because the result may be that your test will yield wrong answers, but you and your colleagues will never be aware of this! Do good work!