Ruled surfaces generated by gimbaled mirrors: II. A comparative study of gimbaled mirrors with the dual axis galvanometric scanners for XY scanning.

The theory developed in the first part of this study [J. Opt. Soc. Am. A38, 1884 (2021)JOAOD60740-323210.1364/JOSAA.435621] is extended to an investigation of the ruled surface produced by a gimbaled mirror and its applications to formulate a new criterion that uses the base curve of the ruled surface as a reference scale to divide the scan field into near and far zones and to investigate ruled surfaces produced by the 1D mirror-scanning systems, such as the monogon, the polygon, and the galvanometric scanners as the special cases of that produced by a gimbaled mirror. Results obtained from the two applications described above lead to placing the ruled surface produced by scanners of different architectures on a platform and then bridging them up by the ruled surfaces they produced for a performance comparison. Although all these scanners may have very different scanning geometries and different application areas, there is one thing making them comparable: the key parameters of the ruled surfaces they produced. As an example, we compare the ray deviation power of a gimbaled mirror with that achievable by a dual galvo scanner for scanning by way of the key parameters of the ruled surfaces they produced.