In designing optical systems for synchrotron radiation, one is often led to conclude that optimal performance can be obtained from optical surfaces described by conic sections of revolution, usually paraboloids and ellipsoids. The resulting design can lead to prescriptions for three-dimensional optical surfaces that are dif®cult to fabricate accurately. Under some circumstances satisfactory system performance can be achieved through the use of more easily manufactured surfaces such as cylinders, cones, bent cones, toroids and elliptical cylinders. These surfaces often have the additional bene®ts of scalability to large aperture, lower surface roughness and improved surface ®gure accuracy. In this paper we explore some of the conditions under which these more easily manufactured surfaces can be utilized without sacri®cing performance.

The fabrication of large grazing-incidence mirrors imposes needs for special fabrication and coating equipment, facilities, and raw materials. The economic realization of such optics has been readily accomplished through close interactions between the mirror users, the fabricator and the manufacturer of the raw material designated as mirror substrate. The manufacture and delivery of a 1.4 m¯at and 1.0 m conical mirror are used to provide examples of recently demonstrated manufacturing technologies and effective interactions between participating organizations.