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**Shane Santi
founded Dream in 2003. He's been studying optics since 1994 and
used his first telescope when he was 10 years old (1980). He
lives in the details because of his desire to know what makes
things tick. Shane's been taking things apart, designing &
building since he was in single digits. This leads to an unquenchable
desire for discovery. Each time a question is answered (discovery),
it becomes knowledge, which leads to deeper questions. |
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**Shane has
used his love and fascination with complex systems to create
a company that focusing on the details others overlook. Small
details matter and they are affecting the final
outcome of the system. His own goal is to move opto-mechanical
structures, optics and full systems into the modern era, since
higher performance means greater scientific discoveries. |
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"Hello Shane, I can't
think of anyone who has delved as deeply into the mechanics of
telescopes as you have." |
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- Dream customer |
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**Around the
mid 1990's Shane read the first of many scientific papers (similar to 3rd paragraph
Answer 2 links) that quantified the much larger than expected
performance
losses associated with solid mirrors.
It became apparent that many selling optical mirrors & systems
were making grossly over-reaching statements because they were
completely ignoring this source of performance loss. These losses
are from both mirror seeing and mechanical bending of the support
structures from traditional solid, heavy mirrors. Although fans
and conditioning observatories can improve performance Shane
felt those solutions left a lot to be desired considering the
density of the optical materials, affinity to maintain temperature
& difficulty of forcing the optic to be controlled to extremely
tight thermal tolerances. He felt the best solution was to change
the source of the problem, by using lightweight mirrors. |
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He formed Dream in 2003 for two main reasons; |
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1.) to combine the complimentary technologies
of modern carbon fiber
& lightweight mirrors, as
well as |
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2.) to solve the century old problem of
print-through in lightweight mirrors. |
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**A more mechanically
& thermally stable total system can; slew faster, hold optical
alignment tolerances better and be far closer to thermal stealth
(optimal performance). |
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**In the years
just prior to starting Dream Shane recognized that he could
take aerospace composite technology and optimize it specifically
for the unique and extreme thermo & mechanical tolerances
that are faced in modern opto-mechanical and electro-optical
instruments. The use of Invar rods to control spacing of optical
components seemed like another poor solution because it requires
two distinct structures instead of one. The more connections
in a system, the more difficult it is to maintain stiffness.
This focus on going after the source of the problems has led
to Dream's athermal
astronomical instruments. The extensive
use of Dream's CF and CFSC™ in the mirror mounts, backplates,
telescope tubes, mounting plates, lens spacers, etc., is ideal
because they have; |
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****- low
mass, |
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****- low CTE and |
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****- extreme
stiffness. |
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**In 2002
and 2003 he quickly discovered that standard composite companies
had little to no knowledge of optical systems, little to no knowledge
of stiffness (not strength)
and the extreme requirements that
come with them, as well as little desire to work with such a
demanding customer. This began a long series of unexpected in-house
developments where Dream was forced to take over more and more
aspects of the total systems, in order to control and achieve
a higher level of performance than the status quo. The benefit
of the long years of R&D can be seen in Dream's in-house
designed & produced stainless steel inserts, the extreme rugged performance of Dream's
advanced composites (see
CFSC screwdriver video), the
low MSF errors
of its engineered, lightweight zeroDELTA™ mirrors. Chasing real-world performance has
to be driven by a person who understands why each parameter needs
such critical control. Otherwise no company will invest the additional
time, effort and expertise that is required to achieve that higher
level of performance. |
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**As soon
as space was leased in 2003 Shane designed the largest composite
oven that Dream uses to this day. It is 12' wide, 6' deep, 6'
high and was upgraded in 2013 after a decade of use. It can maintain
a tight temperature tolerance of +/-1°F, which is roughly
one magnitude tighter than normal aerospace composite ovens.
Dream's resin content is 20-40x more tightly controlled than
standard pre-pregs from a decade ago and 2-4x more tightly controlled
than current (2018) industry-leading space-qualified prepregs.
This unusual attention to detail has led to Dream's actual and
measureable performance gains. |
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**Companies
are more recently using open-market carbon fiber in one or two
components of opto-mechanical systems where only 5-10% of the
"carbon fiber telescope" is actually carbon fiber.
The other 90-95% remain metals; old technology wrapped in a shiny
new promotional bow. Look carefully and ask direct, pointed questions
like, what percentage of the structural weight is carbon fiber?
Is the carbon fiber actually taking the load or is it only cosmetic?
How many components use sandwich core? How does the optical surface
change as ambient temperature changes? |
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Dream's CFSC™ is used extensively
in the structures it produces.
Dream consistently averages 95% carbon fiber and only 5%
metals for the weight of the structures in its athermal telescopes.
(no optics) |
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**Shane began
researching lightweight mirrors of all types nearly 25 years
ago. This was brought on by his interest in understanding numerous
types of seeing, since they degrade system performance. "Seeing"
can come from numerous sources and each source is often complex;
mirror, telescope, observatory, ground effect, etc.
Understanding each source to a deeper
level has allowed Dream's products
to break new performance grounds. |
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One of Dream's 0.4m
instruments is outperforming all other
telescopes in a mulit-year NASA program, with some of those telescopes
being as large as 1m, proving what Ritchey showed 100 years ago;
quality of the total installed system matters far more than aperture,
when the other systems are ignoring fundamental, centuries old
problems. |
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**Dream's advanced composites offer
extreme stiffness and produce an athermal instrument when combined
with Dream's zeroDELTA™
engineered, lightweight mirrors. Customers also use Dream's
CF & CFSC™ with zero-expanion
mirror materials as well because they offer higher stiffness,
lower mass and a much closer match to the mirror material than
aluminum and steel structures. This can eliminate the need for
complex flexures, while offering higher mechanical performance.
Dream's systems achieve the same extreme level of performance
day after day, year after year, while having the lowest maintenance.
What many have considered an atmospheric
limit, is often traditional mirror seeing; a centuries old
problem that Dream has addressed directly. |
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Other
Carbon Fiber Parts |
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biomedical backboard, rigid backboard,
carbon fiber board |
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carbon fiber structures for space,
carbon fiber space structures, cyanate ester, space qualified
carbon fiber |
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The above strut is a prime example of the substantial
gains that Dream achieves with its optimized carbon fiber skinned
sandwich core parts. The strut is
55.7" long, weighs only 1.85 pounds and is shown in a 3-point
bend arrangement under 195 lbs of load. |
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rocketry, IRAC, Spaceport America
Cup, soundingrocket.org |
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Dream's carbon fiber is also superb for zero-expansion
mirror materials like Astro-Sittal, Clear-Ceram, fused silica,
ULE, Zerodur, etc. Click below to see a carbon fiber structure
for a 25" Cassegrain that used ULE mirrors. |
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Connection points in any opto-mechanical
or electro-optical system are often the cause of a loss in stiffness
and therefore performance. This
page shows the pull-out strength of
Dream's stainless steel inserts used within the Dream CFSC parts. |
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"Your company does phenomenal work.
There is a lot of thought and heart that goes into your products.
Dream's engineering sets their lightweight mirrors apart from
competitors. Your engineering goes beyond the lightweight aspect.
You focus on actual performance!" |
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- Ted Kamprath |
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39 years in professional
optics, using everything from million dollar test rooms to 144"
Continuous Polishers. He's spent his career using the latest
in technologies, methods, materials & science to finish precision
optics. |
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Modern
Optical Metrology |
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