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Facilities

4,000 m², ten kinds of work.

Optical surfaces are figured and coated here. Housings are machined here. Electronics are designed and built here. The instrument is assembled, boresighted and tested here. That is what makes the engineering on the previous page worth anything.

Floor area
4,000 m²
People
~100
Location
Yerevan, Armenia
In-house stages
10
The Aragats Ltd building on 27/26 Fuchik Street in Yerevan: a long two-storey stone-clad facility along a tree-lined street.

The building

One address, the whole process.

27/26 Fuchik Street, Yerevan. Around 100 people work here, across 4,000 m² of engineering offices, optical rooms, machine shops, electronics benches and test areas.

Inside the building

6 rooms, photographed.

Not a rendering and not a stock library: these are the rooms the systems on this site are made in. No machine makes or throughput figures are quoted anywhere on this page, because none have been documented for publication.
  • The Aragats optical fabrication room: grinding and polishing machines along one wall, work benches behind, and a large enclosed machine on the right.
    01Optical fabricationOptical fabrication room
  • A row of vacuum deposition plants in the Aragats coating room, each with a cylindrical process chamber and its own control rack.
    02Vacuum coatingVacuum deposition plants, coating room
  • An assembled Aragats objective held in adjustable bench mounts during optical assembly and alignment.
    03Optical assembly and centringAn objective on the alignment bench
  • The Aragats machining hall: several vertical machining centres in operation with machinists working at them.
    05Precision machiningMachining hall
  • An Aragats machinist at a CNC control station, entering a programme with the machine bed visible behind.
    06CNC programming and setupCNC control station
  • Hand soldering on an Aragats circuit board at an ESD-protected bench.
    08Electronics development and assemblyElectronics bench

What each area produces

Listed by output, not by equipment.

The full inventory, including the areas not photographed above. Each one is described by what leaves it.
  1. 01

    Optical fabrication

    Optical surfaces are ground, polished and figured on site. Blanks are worked, checked and reworked in the same room, which is what makes an in-house optical design worth having in the first place.

    Output

    Finished optical elements for thermal, day and rangefinder channels

  2. 02

    Vacuum coating

    Optical surfaces are coated in house on a line of vacuum deposition plants. Coating is where an infrared objective either transmits or does not, so keeping it on site keeps it under the optical designer's control rather than a supplier's.

    Output

    Coated optical elements for the 8–14 µm and visible channels

  3. 03

    Optical assembly and centring

    Elements are cleaned, cemented where required, centred and built up into barrels. Multi-element objectives are assembled and their axes brought into agreement before the channel ever sees a detector.

    Output

    Assembled and centred objectives, 50 mm to 200 mm focal length

  4. 04

    Optical test and alignment

    Collimator benches are used to verify optical performance and to boresight the thermal, day and rangefinder channels of a head against one another.

    Output

    Verified optical performance and channel-to-channel boresight

  5. 05

    Precision machining

    Housings, lens barrels, mounts and mechanism parts are turned, milled and drilled on the company's own machining centres. Because the machines are in the building, a mechanical revision is a matter of days rather than a supplier cycle.

    Output

    Machined optomechanical and structural parts

  6. 06

    CNC programming and setup

    Parts are programmed, set up and first-off checked at the machine. The people who run the programmes work alongside the engineers who drew the parts.

    Output

    Proven programmes and first-off approved parts

  7. 07

    Mechanical fitting and adjustment

    Pan-and-tilt mechanisms are fitted, adjusted and run in, and sealed enclosures are closed up. This is where the published 0.06° positioning accuracy and the IP67/IP68 rating are actually established.

    Output

    Adjusted mechanisms and sealed, gasketed enclosures

  8. 08

    Electronics development and assembly

    Power sources, video receivers and transceivers, motor drive controllers and video interface conversion boards are designed here, then built, inspected and reworked at the bench alongside the engineers who designed them.

    Output

    Detector, video, drive, power and interface assemblies

  9. 09

    System assembly

    Optical channels, mechanisms, electronics and cabling are brought together into a finished head, and the enclosure is closed to its ingress-protection rating.

    Output

    Complete observation heads and hand-held units

  10. 10

    Integration and acceptance test

    Firmware is brought up on the assembled hardware, coordinate solving is calibrated against the axes, and the unit is tested against the ranges and environmental limits in its datasheet.

    Output

    Documented, accepted systems ready for delivery

Recorded on site

See the benches working.

The film below was shot inside the Aragats workshops. In it you can see optical surfaces being ground and polished, elements being centred, parts being turned and drilled, electronic assemblies being built and objectives being checked on the optical bench.

It is a third-party broadcast feature, so it is embedded here and credited rather than reproduced as site photography.

Filmed on site at Aragats. Broadcast feature produced by Banak News, 2022.Watch on YouTube

How the areas connect

From requirement to accepted system.

The facility is organised around this sequence. Nothing in it leaves the building between the requirement and the accepted system.
  1. 01

    Requirements and concept

    Range, resolution, envelope, power and environment are turned into a set of engineering targets that the optical, mechanical and electronic designs are all held against.

    • Optics
    • Electronics
    • Integration
  2. 02

    Engineering

    Physicists, mechanical engineers, electronics engineers and software engineers work the same specification at the same time, so an optical decision is costed in mechanics and power immediately.

    • Optics
    • Mechanics
    • Electronics
    • Firmware
  3. 03

    Optical, mechanical and electronic design

    Detailed design of the objectives and channel layout, the housings, barrels and pan-and-tilt mechanism, and the detector, video, drive and power electronics.

    • Optics
    • Mechanics
    • Electronics
  4. 04

    Prototyping

    Parts are made in the company's own workshops, which keeps the loop between a drawing and a physical part short enough to iterate on.

    • Mechanics
    • Electronics
  5. 05

    Manufacturing

    Optical components are ground, polished and centred; housings, barrels and mechanism parts are machined; electronic assemblies are built and inspected.

    • Optics
    • Mechanics
    • Electronics
  6. 06

    Assembly

    Optical channels are assembled and aligned, mechanisms are fitted and adjusted, and the sealed head is closed up to its ingress-protection rating.

    • Optics
    • Mechanics
  7. 07

    Firmware and system integration

    Detector correction, tracking, coordinate solving and the network control plane are brought up on the real hardware, and the channels are boresighted to each other.

    • Firmware
    • Integration
  8. 08

    Testing

    Optical performance is verified on the bench, and the assembled system is tested against the ranges, accuracies and environmental limits published in its datasheet.

    • Optics
    • Integration
  9. 09

    Delivered system

    A complete, documented product — not a set of parts handed to somebody else to integrate.

    • Integration
Close view of the machined housing of an Aragats observation head: gasketed access panels, rows of captive fasteners and the pan-and-tilt drive body in olive-green finish.

Output of the machine shopMachined panels, gasketed covers and captive fastener rows on a sealed head — parts made on site and fitted on site.

Capacity and equipment

We publish the floor area, the areas of work and what each one produces. We do not publish machine lists, tolerances or throughput figures, because those depend on the part and are better discussed against a real drawing. Send us one and we will tell you what we can hold and how quickly.

See the products these areas produce

Start a project

Have a part or an assembly you need made?

Send the requirement — envelope, environment, quantities and what the part has to do. We will tell you which stages above it would go through and what we would need from you.

Sales and Marketing Manager
+374 99 03 25 35
Send an enquiry