Design, construction and tests of a crystal bender which provides constant position of the central part of the crystal

We propose a new scheme for a crystal bender. This scheme provides the constant position of the central point of a rectangular crystal during the bending process. The measurements show that the full scatter of the position of the central part of a sample during the bending process is slightly less than 100 microns. The measured profile of a sample bent to a radius of about 50 cm was compared with a circle fitted by the least square method. The relative difference between measured and fitted radii appeared to be about 10−5.