Browsing around for optomechanics, gives the impression cage systems are a big deal. But, I'm not personally familliar with any lab which actually uses cage systems in their setup and I'm wondering why.
Obviously there's a trade off here, sacrificing flexibility in setup design for ease of construction. I'm guessing cage systems are also less stable than a pedestal system, but am I missing anything else ? Can anyone share from his own experience with these?
As said, cages allow for modular setups, but can also make alignment easier, as the cage components will automatically align your components to some extent.
Whether the cage is a good choice depends on the application. Cage systems are very convenient for the optical systems, where the light propagates along their axis and whose setup does not need to be changed a lot. Examples: beam expander, collimator, microscope etc. You can put objectives, filters, polarization elements, beam splitter cubes etc very easily and they are more or less self-aligned. Most kinds of translation and rotation mounts are available for cages too. Cage might be not a good choice for the optical systems where the light is reflected with arbitrary angles (e.g. for the laser systems with many mirrors) or for the systems, where some element (especially, somewhere in the middle) has to be often replaced (readjusted etc) but can not be without disassembling the essential part of setup. In many cases cages are at least as robust as post/pedestal based optical systems.
Thanks for all the input. Looks like I will try to incorporate cages into my next system, hope it goes well.
I've also used the Thorlabs cage system extensively over the past 8 years - although not really for optomechanics, but for a robust optical detection in a portable DNA CE instrument. I like the overall solidity and lack of constant realignment when placing dichroics and other filters in cages. Also, the shading from stray light is very good, which is essential for our lab- and field-deployed prototypes.
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