OSU designed and built the aluminization system that is used to deposit a thin coating of reflective aluminum on the concave front surface of the Large Binocular Telescope's 8.4-meter primary mirrors.  To reduce the risk in handling the enormous spun-cast honeycomb glass primary mirrors, the LBT aluminizes the mirrors in-place on the telescope.  The mirror cell that mounts the mirrors on the telescopes doubles as one half of a vacuum bell jar.  The 9-m diameter bell jar lid contains all of aluminization components.

The LBT aluminization system has a variety of unique features: aluminizing the mirror in the telescope with the mirror horizon pointing; boron nitride crucibles for the aluminum sources; only 28 sources are used powered with 280 Volts at 20 kHz; high vacuum is produced with a LN2 cooled charcoal cryo-panel; an inflatable edge seal is used to isolate the rough vacuum behind the mirror from the high vacuum space; and a burst disk is mounted in thecenter hole to protect the mirror from overpressure.

The LBT has two 8.4-m diameter primary mirrors, each of which has been cleaned and recoated every other year using this system starting in 2005.