LBT adaptive secondary units final design and construction

The Large Binocular Telescope will perform its first level AO correction at visual wavelengths by the two Gregorian secondary mirrors. Each unit is made by a 911 mm diameter and 1.6 mm thick Zerodur shell which shape is controlled by 672 electromagnetic actuators at 1 kHz rate. The shape of each mirror is referred to a Zerodur 50 mm thick backplate through a set of capacitive sensors co-located with the actuators. Each adaptive secondary unit embeds its real time computer for actuator control and communication. Each unit is aligned into the secondary hub by a 6 d.o.f. hexapod system. The construction of the AO units started this year, while the hexapods have been completed in 2001. We present in this paper the final design of the adaptive secondary systems with particular emphasis on the modifications that we made based on the MMT adaptive secondary experience. We will also report the first results of the subsystems development tests.