Development of VIRUS alignment and assembly fixtures
The Visible Integral-Field Replicable Unit Spectrograph (VIRUS) Instrument is a set of 150+ optical spectrographs to
support observations for the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX). We plan to use a
production line assembly process to construct the large number of VIRUS units. This allows each sub-assembly of a
VIRUS unit to be interchangeable amongst all other VIRUS units. A production line manufacturing procedure will
enable various sub-assemblies to be built and tested in parallel. Examples of alignment and assembly fixtures required
for the VIRUS manufacturing process include a camera mirror alignment system, a collimator structure assembly device,
a collimator mirror mounting tool, and a grating alignment system. In this paper we describe the design of these fixtures
and their importance in the VIRUS assembly process.