![\"\"](\"https:\/\/bollerandchivens.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/BC.xray_.test_.facility.1.300dpi.jpg\" "\\"B&C.xray.test.facility.1.300dpi\\"")
<\/a>Clyde Chivens with Bliss Bushman, director of Perkin-Elmer West-coast Operations<\/p>\nJohn O’Rourke with Don Winans, Boller and Chivens designers for the High Energy Astronomy Observatory X-Ray Telescope Test-Bed.
\nDon Winans received the NASA Group Achievement Award for his contributions on this project.<\/p>\n
Perkin-Elmer, Norwalk, Connecticut ground and polished the cylindrical X-Ray Telescope lenses.
\nA stainless steel test frame was fabricated and installed inside a large diameter surplus NASA oxygen vessel at Marshal Space Flight Center.
\nConnected to the vessel was a 1,600 foot long, 36-inch diameter stainless steel conduit pipe terminating at its opposite end to another stainless steel vacuum vessel containing a Boller and Chivens auto-collimating telescope combined with an alignment Laser.
\nSeveral LN2 vacuum diffusion pumps evacuated the entire large vessel, the 1,600 of conduit and the telescope vessel to a low-as-possible vacuum condition.
\nThe vertical pipe holding an optical flat mirror and located at the front end of the test-bed is used for initial system collimation before replacing it with the actual X-Ray Telescope.
\nThe HEO-B X-Ray Telescope was mounted on the test-bed for angular calibrations while under near- space vacuum conditions.
\nElectric motor drives mounted outside the vacuum chamber would rotate drive shafts through rotational vacuum seals to the azimuth and elevation angle adjustment ball screws assemblies.
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\nThe Test-Bed could be adjusted to plus or minus two degrees in both azimuth and elevation.
\nThis photo shows the large azimuth and elevation ball-screw jacks, the custom azimuth universal
\nU-joint, conical ball-bearing azimuth angle rollers and the spiral flexible couplings
\nThe four conical rollers were mounted and height adjustable at the four corners of the Test-Bed.
\nPre-installed were round pipe extension tubes welded to inner wall of the large vacuum chamber for the adjustable azimuth roller assembles to be attach to.
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\nThis photo, again shows the large azimuth and elevation ball-screw jacks, the custom azimuth, universal U-joint, conical ball-bearing azimuth angle rollers and the spiral flexible couplings.
\nIt also shows the Vacuum Feed Through for the motor drive shafts through the large vessels walls.<\/p>\n