CAD Design

I salvaged a 12" parabolic mirror for a single mirror Schlieren setup. While a spherical mirror would be more forgiving, I've had to carefully design the imaging train and pinhole projector as close together as possible to sit in the axis of collimation. A laser central to the setup allows for acceptable collimation, utilizing the reflection of the laser as you would collimate a Newtonian telescope. The light source is a 530nm green LED, matching my camera sensor's QE peak, paired with an Edmund #36-168 condenser lens and a 50µm pinhole from National Aperture. The knife edge sits horizontally, coplanar with the pinhole, at 2400mm.