System for fabricating an optical element

A system for fabricating an optical element, said system comprising:

• means for welding an array of fibers to the optical element;
• means for measuring an angle error and a position error of each fiber relative to the element;
• means for calculating a correction for each fiber for the angle error and the position error;
• and
• means for correcting the angle and position of each fiber using the calculated corrections, wherein the optical element includes an input beam shaper array having a plurality of rectilinear input array cells positioned adjacent and in contact with each other in a tiled manner, each input array cell including an input beam shaper that receives one of a plurality of beams and is shaped to cause the beam to expand as it propagates away from the input beam shaper array to be converted from the round Gaussian profile to a high fill factor flat-top profile and cause the high fill factor flat-top profile to taper to a lower value at a perimeter of each beam, and an output beam shaper array including a plurality of rectilinear output array cells positioned adjacent and in contact with each other in a tiled manner so that each output array cell is matched to an input array cell, each output array cell including an output beam shaper that receives one of the converted beams and is shaped to flatten the wavefront of the converted beam so that the output beam shaper array provides a plurality of adjacent beams with minimal overlap and a minimal gap between the beams.