Patent ID: 8491353

Claim:
A method of improving a shape of a high-precision surface, comprising the steps of: a) providing a material with an initial shape on at least one face thereof; b) measuring errors in the initial shape of the high-precision surface, the errors being deviations from a desired shape; and c) correcting the errors in the initial shape of the high-precision surface by selectively applying pulses of light from a laser to the errors to ablate the deviations, wherein: the shape is a substantially circularly symmetric feature; and step (c) includes the steps of: cl) moving a beam spot of the laser along a perimeter of the substantially circularly symmetric feature in one of a clockwise direction or a counterclockwise direction at a rate of spin; c2) irradiating the high-precision surface along the perimeter of the feature with the pulses of light, at a pulse frequency selected such that centers of ablated regions from consecutively applied pulses are separated by a predetermined circumferential distance; c3) repeating steps (c1) and (c2) until the errors along the perimeter of the substantially circularly symmetric feature are substantially corrected; c4) radially moving the beam spot of laser by a predetermined radial distance to one of a smaller perimeter or a larger perimeter of the substantially circularly symmetric feature; and c5) repeating steps (c1), (c2), (c3), and (c4) until the errors of the initial shape are substantially corrected.