Newton STFC-NARIT : Towards freeform optics manufacturing capabilities in Thailand for Space and Astronomical applications

Thailand is quickly building its astronomical instrumentation development capacity. In the past decade, National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand (NARIT) has actively grown its workforce on two fronts: astronomical instrumentation for the Thai National Observatory (TNO) and space instrumentation and satellite development through the Thailand Satellite Consortium (TSC; NARIT, the Siam Photon Laboratory and the Geo-informatics and Space Technology Development Agency). TSC is currently building its first "made in Thailand" satellites - a major national milestone. However, one limitation restricts independent advancement on these fronts: to access innovative technologies, Thailand must rely on developed countries for hardware and associated support, and this is particularly true for optical design and manufacture, which depend heavily on heritage, expertise and specialised equipment.

NARIT desires to remove this barrier and invest in a future Thailand optical manufacturing capability, which will help to drive Thailand's economy and industries in line with the Thailand 4.0 economic model. This project proposes a programme that provides both knowledge exchange and a joint Thai-UK research project, to upskill Thai academics and engineers in conventional and additive optical manufacturing methods, to enable internal capability and impact within wider disciplines.

The project will enable the transfer of 2 key technologies to Thailand:

- Freeform optics are identified as a NARIT research priority; they are novel, versatile optical elements with no axis of rotation or symmetry. Increasingly, they are used in pioneering optical designs offering abundant new opportunities for optical designers. The emergence of these new types of surfaces has been very much in pace with the development of Single Point Diamond Turning (SPDT).
- Metal additive manufacturing (MAM), which has significant potential when applied to optical manufacturing and freeform optics in particular. MAM is the process of building a component layer-upon-layer in metal and it is commonly used low count bespoke parts. MAM prints a near-net shape without material removal, formers, or shape manipulation, which define conventional manufacture

Combining Metal Additive Manufacturing with optical freeform manufacturing has, therefore, a lot of potential for the production of pioneering astronomical and space instrumentation. SPDT and MAM have also a strong potential to be spun out into business ventures to stimulate the local economy.

The proposal "Towards freeform optics manufacturing capabilities in Thailand for Space and Astronomical applications" is a multi-disciplinary project, which will endeavour to promote the economic development and welfare of Thailand while maximising the academic impact of the work. This will be achieved by transferring conventional and additive manufacturing skills to Thailand leading to high academic and technological impact.

Academic impact: Metal mirror fabrication and metrology key knowledges will be transferred to NARIT staff during the precision manufacturing and metrology training held in Durham for a week and during 3 placements for a Thai researcher. An open access scientific paper, co-authoring all of the UK and Thailand participants will be published and the project's scientific work will be presented in an international conference.

Economic impact: Maximisation of the economic impact will be achieved by defining a clear roadmap to the market and by understanding how the local to regional economy could benefit from skills gained during this project. The project will explore business opportunities offering services of the 2 main technologies (Conventional and Additive Metal optics precision manufacturing) locally and in the wider South East Asia. An important aspect of the project will be to look at how freeform optics and additive manufacturing capability in Thailand could benefit other scientific and commercial areas such as in Healthcare (contact lenses freeform inserts, Additive manufacturing of metal implants), Automotive and Aeronautics. A workshop on Astronomical & Space instrumentation will be organised in Thailand at the end of the project, to encourage networking, industrial engagement and scientific dissemination.


Societal impact: Outreach will be central to the project activities with participation at some NARIT exhibitions in regional observatories, Siam Physics Conference and Thai Physics festivals. The impact goal is to highlight the importance of STEM careers in technology development in the hope to encourage more Thai school children to study a STEM subject for further education.