Optical Fabrication

Abstract

Traditional optical fabrication processes utilize abrasive grinding, lapping to shape the glass optics and polishing to achieve an optical surface finish. The introduction of numerical control technology has resulted in higher productivity and better quality for glass optical fabrication. For medium‐ to high‐volume production, injection molding of aspherical plastic lenses is more economically feasible. Very recently, compression molding process has also emerged as a possible solution to high‐volume glass aspherical lens manufacturing. For low‐volume applications that include optical molds and high‐precision optics, special polishing techniques have been developed.

Compression Molding of Aspherical Glass Lenses–A Combined Experimental and Numerical Analysis

“…For high‐volume products such as camera lenses, projection lenses, and telecom products, due to the manufacturing process limitation spherical glass lenses are normally used. In spite of the continuing innovations in the synchro‐speed process used for lens fabrication, which have resulted in gradual cost reduction and quality improvement, the basic design of a traditional lens manufacturing process has not changed 1–4 . A typical lens manufacturing process consists of a series of material removal processes.…”

Optical and physics differential characteristics of optical plastics

“…Algunas de las características de las lentes orgánicas solo pueden ser bien entendidas si se conoce el proceso de fabricación. Las lentes plásticas se fabrican mayoritariamente por moldeo [1,14], si bien para algunos casos especiales como lentes muy grandes o muy pequeñas existen otras técnicas alternativas [15,16]. La técnica de moldeo permite un alto volumen de producción cuando se compara con las lentes inorgánicas, lo que lleva asociado un abaratamiento de los costes de producción.…”

Novel combinatorial method for evaluation of machinability for glass lens mold material

“…For glass lens with diffraction gratings, precision glass molding process, as no post-processing such as grinding or polishing is necessary, is much more suitable than conventional glass grinding and polishing method, which makes is possible to fabricate high volume, high precision optics elements with complex shape [1][2]. Compression glass molding is a promising manufacturing process with high precision which is shown as Figure 1.…”